Do we really need another source of WordPress news? Will this just turn into a link farm? A popularity contest is the last thing WordPress needs. So I would pop in every now and again, dropping in some links and up-voting here and there. I wasn’t fully engaged with it as a source, because heck, I was doing my own twist on coverage in the industry.

It even stung a few times when I would submit my content and it got flagged. I think hyper-focused WordPress developers still aren’t wiling to open up to other angles of business as it relates to the WordPress ecosystem — but that’s another discussion.

No worries, this is par for the course when you have a community rating system and at the end of the day, it ultimately makes it the compelling reason to be involved.

Then work got in the way

As an agency owner, there’s one thing you can bet on — busy starts to the new year.

If you’re out there hustling for clients and building your network, eventually your referral engine starts rolling. It seems every new year we have to brace for a rush of business and this year was no different. Add our WordPress products (Themes & Conductor) to the mix and I’ve got myself a fairly full plate.

Enter in ManageWP.org (again)

This is that Aha! moment I didn’t have at the first go-round with the website.

Now that all cylinders are firing, the community-driven website is just the ticket for when I need to see what’s trending for the last few days.

Missed a few hours in the day from the Twitter feed? No worries, I can hop on and check the top voted news. Need to see what other’s opinions are on a topic? Easy-peasy, we can check out the comments (if there are any*) on the respective topic.

All of this wrapped-up in a nice efficient display of top posts. Kudos.

Some caveats

For listeners of The Matt Report, you might not find your dose of WP business news or digital business trends there. It still seems that folks favor the more technical side of WordPress on ManageWP.org. Not a surprise to me really, I’ve been doing this for a while.

I think that’s the murky side of community-driven portals. Once one culture dominates, the fewer we see of others. Either way, I’m welcoming the site back into my semi-daily rotation and I hope you give it a shot too.

Bonus round

I love data and I’m sure you do too.

One of my favorite areas of the site is the statistics page. You can find all of that top posts by domain, category and contributors. As you can see my favorite topic, Business, really lags behind. Maybe we can change that?

We’re going to satisfy our typical entrepreneur appetite by diving into his day-to-day routine and we’ll learn what it’s like being the CEO of Automattic. Want to know where Mullenweg’s vision for WordPress is going to take us? No problem, we’ve got you covered.

For those of you interested in the nitty-gritty of the WordPress community, we’ll discuss his take on .com vs .org and our latest debate — the purpose of the Jetpack plugin.

My thoughts expressed in this discussion with Mullenweg are a culmination of my experiences in the WordPress marketplace over the last few years. We all walk a different path in our professional journey and that’s what creates our unique finger print or identity.

My intentions in this episode are that of someone who continues to work hard to build a brand and attractive product offering for my customers. Though I love WordPress and it’s community, top-down decisions can be a bit scary for a bootstrapped business person like me and I suspect, some of you as well.

Remember, I grew up under the boot of General Motors.

Can you afford to give back?

Five for the future was one such topic that left me thinking like I was pulled from the game too early. Freelancers, consultants and boutique agencies are sure to feel the pressure of dedicating 5% when they are still very much feeling the growing pains of organic growth. Will Mullenweg’s response surprise you?

You will have to listen in.

On Jetpack and 50% adoption

According to Mullenweg, greater general adoption of WordPress will bring more developers to the platform. Fairly straightforward.

Is Jetpack the answer though?

My concern is the priority of Jetpacks distribution for every new WordPress site installed. Getting found in the .org repo is already a challenge and if Jetpack moves into, say, the famous five-minute install – what domino effect will that have on the rest of us?

In the interview I asked Mullenweg about that and generalized a scenario where a user chooses Jetpack forms over Gravity Forms. According to Mullenweg, plugin offerings like Gravity Forms have actually prospered since the release of Jetpack.

I reached out to Carl Hancock to see if he had any data that matched up:

As for Jetpack’s impact on Gravity Forms? I certainly wouldn’t say that Gravity Forms has prospered because of Jetpack. I don’t think there is anyway to quantify or establish that as being true. While it is true our revenue has grown tremendously since Jetpack was released, our revenue had grown every month from the time we launched until the time Jetpack was released. The growth simply continued it’s existing trajectory after Jetpack was released.

As far as the data goes I can tell you that last month was a record for us in terms of revenue. Jetpack was released in March of 2011 and since that time our monthly revenue numbers have grown 5x.

Understanding that both Jetpack’s solution and Carl’s solution cater to two different markets, my concern still lies within distribution of plugins. At what stage could Jetpack start eating away at the bottom line of other plugins?

Perhaps we embrace it like Chris Lema advises and trust that reaching for 50% will provide us better opportunity than available now. In fact, I already have with my latest theme, Symphony.

Go far together

I really appreciate Matt taking the time to chat with us. If you enjoyed this interview, would you say thank you to him?

At the end of the day, what makes WordPress great is that we all have a chance to have our voice heard. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get our way, but at least we can bring the discussion to the table. To have someone who represents one of the most influential pieces of software in human history, join your little podcast, is truly an honor.

Thanks, Matt.

I also realize that no one has given me the right to profit off of the WordPress platform. Nothing is guaranteed and as business builders of your own, I hope you don’t take our current state of WordPress for granted.

I always find his posts thought-provoking and I felt this one in particular warranted a blog post of my own. Sorry for not leaving you the comment love, Tom.

The following isn’t intended to debunk his idea of innovation or why we should or shouldn’t be thinking about it. What I’m about to discuss here is something that, as a product developer, I bake into the philosophy behind our product line at Slocum Themes.

For better or for worse, a lot of this stems from my time growing up in the auto industry and living within that culture for the first 26 years of my life. It’s the values that I learned from being in that business which have brought me to where I am today.

When innovation hurts

Put aside for a moment that design is subjective.

It’s easy to look across the WordPress theme landscape and shout, “All of this shit looks the same!” Sure, rummaging through 1 content column combined with a sidebar and traditional header after the other and the record player feels like it’s on repeat.

I get it, and I won’t argue, there’s a lot of the same crap out there. I won’t even get into wether or not these are intentional rip-offs or just dumb luck, though I have an eerie feeling it’s more of the former.

So what are we left to do? Innovate of course.

Cavemen, weights, and themes

Let’s hop in our time machine and go back to the cavemen and cavewomen that wanted to get stronger, but didn’t have P90X in their lives. What did they do to strengthen their biceps? Lifted rocks!

Man would collect round rocks that he could curl multiple times in a repetitious exercise. Feeling the pump and getting stronger to hunt for the day. The stronger he wanted to get, the larger the rock he could seek out. Soon, rocks were getting too big to hold in one hand to continue pushing the limits of their weight training.

Another fault of rocks was, they weren’t perfectly round and they came in all shapes and sizes. Anything more than 25-30lb and Man couldn’t curl the stone properly because of his natural movement and awkwardness of the stone. Nevermind trying to hold two in both hands. What are they to do?

Innovate.

Ancient Greek Halteres – Source: Wikipedia

Some years later, the Ancient Greeks came along and solved the problem by placing holes in the stones. They called them Halteres. This allowed man to hold the stone and properly flex to perform the exercise. Brilliant, but there’s just one more problem. The stones are getting even bigger in size to make up for the weight difference. Back to the innovation drawing board.

George Barker Windship Source: Wikipedia

Lets hop into our time machine and fast forward to 1865 where a man named George Barker Windship was creating the modern day barbell/dumbbell as we know it. Finally, a device that you can easily hold in your hand and adjust the usability of. No longer do we have to quarry for rock or chisel out rough edges so our hands don’t bleed. We simply apply the needed weights, tighten the ends, and voila we have our own home gym. Now to the crux of the situation, rapidinnovation.

This is the part of the story that I want to equate to WordPress themes (and other products) because Windship’s product eventually become a commodity due to market demand and amount of available inventory.

Sinking the dumbbell

The adjustable dumbbell is probably the most popular of innovative dumbbells. For anyone wanting their own home gym without the clutter of a rack of weights, it makes perfect sense. One set of ‘bells to rule them all. The problem with this innovation is, there are now a lot of weak links within the product. The dial could break or you could lose the indiviudal weights. There’s also a distrupt in the user experience. You can’t just drop the weight down and pick up another set to ramp up — you must pause and adjust — before kicking back into beastmode.

Then we’ve got dumbbels that aren’t even dumbbells anymore. They are weighted sticks that are severely limited in their purpose to grow your biceps.

Where the wheels really start falling off is when we see products like AquaBells, dumbbells you fill with water. I don’t even have words for this.

And lastly, the most famous of innovative weights is the ShakeWeight. Simply hold the weight up (or not) and it will get the pump on for you. Man’s innovation to solve the dumbbell problem and lazy fat ass problem too. Amazing.

Sinking the WordPress theme

Naturally, we see the same problem of innovation in WordPress themes too.

Themes that are coming equipped with every feature under the sun and every option for the end-user to help them (allegedly) build their website. But you and I know that is not the case. When it comes to WordPress software a majority of the users simply want to publish content and don’t have time to learn how to use a content management system let alone “do WordPress the right way.”

What is the right way? Shouldn’t it do it for us?

Here’s a screenshot of a theme that recently had it’s marketing e-mail land in my inbox:

I know that 80% of my customers brain’s would melt trying to navigate that screen and from a product developer stand point, I would never want to support this or force my user into thinking what to do with the product. (Perhaps they don’t either and that’s a story for another thread.)

The point here: innovation can take us down a slippery slope. Looking back to see what Man did to weights over time, there’s evidence that often we over engineer things. I’m scared to see a lot of that trickling into digital products as well.

There’s nothing wrong with a well-built theme without the frills.

I just want it to fucking work

When I worked at my family’s Chevrolet dealership, I sold a lot of trucks. Incase you didn’t know, trucks are the highest selling vehicle unit in America. Ford, dominates with the F-150 and then Chevrolet with their trophy, The Silverado.

With every new model year, we would see new innovation. Trucks that could tow more or the increased horse power and cabin space. Materials that wouldn’t scratch your pickup’s bed or HD exterior lighting so you could work at night. My favroite line was talking about how GM hydro-formed truck frames. “These frames weren’t welded to leave weak links, the engineers used a new method for bending steel through high-pressured water jets. It’s the strongest frame on the market.” I loved that line.

When a customer was buying a truck, a majority of them anyway, wanted it for work. They relied on their truck to not only get them to the job site, but as something that worked for them as well. Customers were very loyal to their truck’s brands because of this. Even if their new Chevy didn’t have the power of the Ford or the fresh new looks of the Toyota, they bought it anyway. They had a proven track record of reliability and they trusted our service department when there was an issue.

At the end of the day, they just needed it to fucking work. No bells, no whistles, no flashy chrome spinning wheels. They needed a product that got it done with a team to back them up.

Innovating the approach and not the product

Our themes at Slocum Themes are not groundbreaking in terms of their feature set or design. The layouts are very traditional and tend to steer clear of modern trendy design. We try, as best we can, to leave out the kitchen sink even though sometimes we get struck by shiny object syndrome. If I could relate it to our dumbbell story, we’re of the traditional dumbbell type. You’re not getting a basic rock to workout with, but your also not getting a product that requires D batteries to operate.

I’m of the mindset that our clients don’t want a theme with 1,000 options either, but a theme that solves their current problem and a team that can back it up when they need support.

So while themes become more of a commodity, I choose to innovate around them versus in them. Sure we’ll be launching themes with new features compared to old, but each embodies an intent or purpose for the client or situation it’s intended to solve.

At the end of he day, a rock can still get the job done for you, but you’re just fooling yourself if you think that the automated dumbbell is getting you anywhere. I encourage us all to build product that can stand the test of time.

Today, Nathan Wright of Theme of The Crop joins the Matt Report podcast to tell us how accurate my findings were. We’ll also explore what he’s doing to improve on the weak points I had identified in this analysis of his digital business.

So how did Nate react to my “take down” of his website? Let’s find out!

The Painter’s House is Never Painted

When I created this analysis of Nate’s business, I wanted to explore this as an exercise of the discovery process. It isn’t just about finding weak points in your competitor’s marketing plan, but a method for researching a market for your own unique marketing initiatives.

I want you to walk away with a new found respect for just how many moving parts there are to make the digital marketing wheel spin.

Content marketing

Call to actions

Proper messaging

Design

Site speed

SEO

Link building

Branding & awareness

Social channels

These are the core concepts Nate and I chat about in this episode. Recently I wrote about the Plight of the Cobbler, which depicts entrepreneurs as tinkerers consumed by the process and the tools we use. We could spend hours or days obsessing over finite details that barely move the needle of our business. Why? Simply because we enjoy it — which is okay — but doesn’t allow us to achieve scale and clarity in our business.

There’s nothing wrong with being The Cobbler and I’ll argue it’s the most important phase we go though. The problem is, The Cobbler will immediately try to consume all of the areas I outlined above as her immediate task list. “I must tackle all of this!” she screams. Not so.

It is to become refined and great in a few of these areas and then scale to the next level. As we’ll learn from Nate, he’s currently working on a new design and messaging for his website. He’s not actively trying to approach all of this as one big problem and that’s smart.

Interview with Nate Wright

What about you? What area are you struggling with and what are you doing to address it?

]]>https://mattreport.com/reverse-engineer-part-2-interviewing-target/feed/0The Plight of The Cobblerhttps://mattreport.com/plight-of-the-cobbler/
https://mattreport.com/plight-of-the-cobbler/#commentsFri, 30 Jan 2015 16:23:14 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=6155One day you woke up and said to yourself that you wanted to control our own destiny. No more listening to the man or long hours stuck in a cubical.

“This podcast said I could do it!” you shout. So you went to work.

You found your first few customers through friends of friends and that extra $500 going into the weekend was damn nice. Back then it was easy, because you were honest. You were honest with yourself and your customer.

“Hey, I’m just starting out with this whole web design thing, but I can do it for ya.” You didn’t know it, but you were setting the client to consultant expectation. Somewhere along the way you’ve lost that.

The Cobbler finds herself lost in the work and not in the journey.

The problem: You don’t know the why

When I’m talking to other consultants and boutique agencies, I’m always digging for the why.

Why did you get into this industry? Do you have a long-term goal that you’re trying to achieve or is this just bridging the gap for some short-term cash? This past weekend I wrote an e-mail to my newsletter about this very dilemma.

You might have a company mission statement, but does that get you up every day?

For me it’s about solving problems by building technology that hasn’t been built before. That could be by piecing together off-the-shelf WordPress plugins or writing completely custom web apps from scratch.

It’s the journey, not the destination, I’ve come to enjoy.

What about you? If you cannot define yourself and your purpose, how can you possibly define your goals? I’m confident that a majority of us fall into these character sets:

The Plight of The Cobbler

Take in the definition and that photo for a moment. What thoughts come to your mind?

Cobbler’s love the work that they do. I mean, you’d have to really love your job to fix other people’s shoes, right? As you take this in, what are some of the things you’ve noticed about the Cobbler?

There are no assistants.

No front-end person.

He’s the owner and the technician

He’s surrounded by his work

He’s surrounded by his tools

He repairs shoes, rather than manufactures them.

It’s in the very definition of The Cobbler where failure begins to rear its ugly head.

Repair vs Manufacturing (A Freelancer vs A Business)

If you’re a Cobbler your committing yourself to fix one problem at a time for one client at a time. Where the shoe manufacturer is serving thousands, employing a team, and setting up a process of streamlined manufacturing. Along with that foundation, sales and support to keep the company chugging full steam ahead.

WordPress is a breeding ground for Cobblers

I am 110% guilty of this.It’s part entrepreneur brain, part love for WordPress, part love for the industry.

I can spend hours trying new tools, plugins, and themes. It’s part of my job to stay sharp and bleeding edge of all things web and WordPress. I’m also a product builder, so I need to know what other software companies are doing with their offerings.

All your tools are belong to us

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You started a project with this great new theme that promises design for an amazing new website in less time than it takes your 8-cup Chemex to brew your coffee. The client is going to love it, it’s exactly what they want and be damned if you’re going to waste time coding this yourself — you’re going to make 8000% margin!

You set out and start to style the homepage and it’s looking great — the client gives you a thumbs up. Fantastic! You’re already planning your Super Bowl weekend.

Now you just have to touch it up by installing a contact form plugin, e-commmerce, lead gen, commenting plugin, bread crumbs, oh yeah and a gallery. Wait, they want a slider on the homepage, no problem! We can do that. We have the resources.

Then it all starts to unravel. You find your colleagues recommending another tool to get the job done. “It’s the easiest thing since sliced bread!” they shout.

Yep, that’s what I need. I need this tool!

Back to square one. There you are, chipping away at the sole of this shoe with your tools and your fancy apron. Birds are chirping, it’s now April, and that project you were supposed to have done in a weekend has now taken you 65 days.

The solution

It’s about the journey

Something that really burns me is when I see internet marketers using pictures of Lambo’s to represent success. An illusion that your business can go from 0 – 60mph in 3 seconds in the world’s most prestigious car is absolute bullshit.

It’s also unhealthy to think it’s that easy. It’s the journey that defines us.

Each failure, success, conversation, hard time, good time and client creates a fingerprint that no one else can replicate. That is how our business is defined.

How does the Cobbler become the Artist?

Define who you are. I Want you to define what you’re truly capable of and what really motivates you about this business. Write it out and say it proud. If you’re not a developer, recognize it and don’t call yourself one. If you’ve never studied emotions or color theory or have never sketched out a layout on a piece of paper — don’t use designer.

I’m neither. My only real power is connecting with people and seeing scale at a 30-thousand foot view. Wish me luck.

Define your toolset. This is an addiction, I know it. I always want to try something new on incoming projects. Here’s what keeps me grounded: We have a core set of tools that we use on each project, like our Conductor plugin for layouts and content.

When we’re faced with a decision of looking for a new tool or building the solution, I’ll look to see if this is something that WordPress can already handle OR if we build it, can we use it again? For example, content permission capabilities. WordPress has ‘roles’ built into core — do you really need the overhead of a complex membership plugin?

Give yourself R&D time to play with new technology. Keep your project workflow streamlined and only divert from the path when it’s absolutely necessary.

Become specialized. You want to become designed for a particular purpose. For me, I specialize in building WordPress solutions for content publishers. You’re not only defining a better marketing message, but this specialization will equip you to have better internal processes and make client engagements even smoother.

Theoretical bullshit.

Sure is. When you’re in the stage of The Cobbler your biggest obstacle is yourself.

Mentally preparing yourself for growth, confidence, and defining yourself is what brings you to the next phase. If you do not write this shit down and train yourself to reflect on your journey – You. Will. Fail.

You will fall deeper into the abyss of doing the work. Every new client is just a cash grab to keep you breathing above water. There is no consistency in your work and your client problems become your problems.

That’s not to say you become so rigid that you cannot expand on your core and move into a new direction. You must be agile and be aware that you explore new paths to become The Artist.

In a recent e-mail I sent, I asked you to define who you were. Tell me, are you The Cobbler, The Artist, The Boutique Bossman, or The Digital Maven? Find the definitions here. Leave a comment below.

]]>https://mattreport.com/plight-of-the-cobbler/feed/7DigitalOcean for WordPress Hosting & Staginghttps://mattreport.com/digitalocean-wordpress-hosting-staging/
https://mattreport.com/digitalocean-wordpress-hosting-staging/#commentsWed, 28 Jan 2015 17:22:38 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=6133My father grew up tinkering with cars and I grew up tinkering with servers.

Back in the day, I was a computer salesman at Circuit City. Small Office/Home Office was the name of the department – team SOHO. Funny, as if people were only buying PC’s and technology for office work! A customer came in one day looking for the cheapest computer he could buy as he rummaged through the open box specials. I sold him a $250 NEC tower 450mhz Pentium II w/ 512mb of RAM. Today’s smartphone is 25x more powerful (yet oddly enough still lags.)

I asked him what he was going to do with this rig and he replied, “I’m going to install Linux.” What’s this Linux you speak of? I started researching.

Long story short, I bought my own version of Mandriva right off the shelf (Yes, software came in boxes once) and I was hooked ever since. I went to school for network management and then held a job at a local ISP for 7 years integrating Linux and server solutions.

Enter DigitalOcean

I remember the day I read about DigitalOcean and their $5/mo VPS plan. “Ha! 5 bucks?! What a bunch of suckers, this will never last!” I mean really, $5 for SSD VPS with 20GB of storage and 512 of RAM?! How could they sustain?

That was June of 2013, I signed up and I’ve been a customer ever since.

My early concerns were squashed fairly quickly. I expected lots of downtime and slow load. I also expected a turbulent user experience in the dashboard. Neither happened. I think I remember 2 service disruptions since signing up and neither of them left me down for more than an hour.

DigitalOcean for your WordPress staging

Everyone has a different take on development & staging environments. My friend Jason likes to match his dev environments exactly with what the customer uses in production. Then there’s services like WP Stagecoach and DesktopServer which is fairly popular.

For me, I just want to have something in the cloud I can boot up and connect to, no matter where I am. I also don’t want extra software or services running on my laptop just to test out a new WP install. Especially if I want to share the dev environment with my team or a customer.

Pros for me:

Affordable

Quick and easy dev environments

I can copy/share images

Accessible anywhere

My favorite features of DigitalOcean

I really love the no-nonsense control panel they’ve put together. It’s clean, simple and easy to navigate. It’s easy to find all of the call to actions you need to manage your servers or editing your billing. In all fairness when they launched, they didn’t have nearly as many features, but as of this writing, it’s fantastic.

Control Panel

Droplets are my servers. I can select where I deploy these droplets by regions around the world. I can also select which version of Linux I’d like to run. For years I was a diehard CentOS fan, now I’m most Ubuntu.

Much like WordPress touts a 5 minute install, DigitalOcean promises to get you up and running with a VPS in 55 seconds. They don’t let you down on that promise either.

Pro tip: You should have an understanding of installing, maintaining and securing a Linux OS before trying this. At the very least, you should be willing to learn.

Documentation

Can you feel the power of that freshly launched VPS just ready to serve up WordPress pages blazingly fast? This is the best part! The creamy filling.

Wait! What’s sudo apt-get update mean? Oh boy…

This leads me to my next favorite part of DigitalOcean — their documentation. If you’re new to administrating a Linux box, they have a ton of tutorials to get you up and running, even for WordPress.

There are a lot of general setup tutorials out on the web, but DigitalOcean delivers a plethora of well thought out deep dive tutorials here.

The little things

Worried about the performance of your $5 a month VPS? No worries, the control panel gives you a command center feel with graphs to pinpoint bottlenecks in your setup.

Snapshots allow me to freeze my build in time and re-deploy it later. After you’ve spent hours fine tuning your server, preserve it. If you make changes that alter it down the road, you can always reload that image. You can also transfer images to another customer which is awesome for deploying your environment to a client. Need to test out page speed in another region? No problem.

The Verdict: DigitalOcean is a Go!

If you’re looking for a VPS that you have complete control over for hosting or WordPress development environments, I’d seriously consider DigitalOcean. The price is fantastic and best of all, it’s super easy to use. Nothing really gets in the way of doing what you need to do — spinning up VPS’s on the fly.

The only drawback is…

You have to be familiar with installing, supporting, and maintaining a linux environment. You should have some knowledge of the command line and have a general understanding of Apache or NGINX and what these services are doing.

That said, if you want to learn, this is a great place to do it.

I’ll also leave you with this interview with Jason Calacanis and one of the co-founders of DigitalOcean, Mitch Wainer.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, wether you’ve been a DO customer or planning on giving them a go.

What you’re about to read is not a magic bullet to beating out your competition. It’s also not some secret NSA-like dive into their data or secret documents. This data that is freely available to you, me, and everyone else on the web. I’m just stringing together data points that lead to building a robust discovery profile. In fact, I leave out additional public information in this article because I don’t want it to harm my test subject. The information provided here can help your own web presence, evaluate areas of opportunity against your competition, and aide in discovering new client projects.

Meet Nate

Before you knock on my door with pitch-forks and torches, Nate has agreed to undergo this study. This is by no means a form of slander or an attack against his brand. For what it’s worth, how could I compete against that beard and joyful accent?

As you will learn, I consider Nate a category competitor to my business, Slocum Themes.

Yes, he’s selling premium WordPress themes just like me, but his focus is in the restaurant arena with different features and messaging than my own. While there’s an argument in the WordPress community that themes can be, for the most part, general purpose — I choose to disregard that in this context. Alright, ready to do some reverse engineering? Let’s hop to it.

Understanding your competition

Before we begin, we must understand the challenges of competing against other companies in our market.

If you’re launching a bootstrapped (the business process not the technology) theme marketplace, you’d be hard pressed to beat ThemeForest right out of the gate. Same for launching that Genesis child theme you built — good luck going toe-to-toe for StudioPress traffic. The point here is, you want to bite off what you can chew. Set realistic market and competitive advantages that you can respectfully achieve.

Let’s place our competitors into categories:

Direct Competitor – This is someone you know you can compete with. A business that does 90% of what you do with very similar marketing and customer acquisition strategies. This is the sweet spot that we want to dissect and find new opportunities for our own business.

Category Competitor – This is someone that creates a similar product in your market, but executes differently. In the case of the Theme of the Crop, they create themes for restaurants. So a restaurant owner could compare one of my themes to Nate’s, but I’d probably lose to the unique features he bakes in.

We both offer WordPress themes, but our messaging and core product are different.

Indirect Competitor – This competitor doesn’t compete with your product, but they compete for your customer’s attention. I feel like this is still a threat to your business, especially in today’s content marketing heavy world. As media and marketing become a richer and more interactive experience, attention becomes a lot more valuable.

Apple - Can you guess where this category is going? These are the Apple’s of your industry. Certainly a stretch goal for your team, but you’re not going to compete with them anytime soon. Still, who says we can’t reverse engineer what’s worked for them?

Build your Competitor Board

Building a competitor board is a great way to organize this data, archive it, and then revisit it for future use. There’s a high-level of utility here, including:

Tracking your competition over time

An idea generator for your content team

Customer profiling for your marketing team

Ad research for your PPC campaigns

Profiling competitive social persona

You might find more than what I’ve outlined, but that list represents the immediate use cases for me.

My suggestion is to build Trello lists based on the competition categories mentioned in step 1 and place your competitor cards accordingly. Feel free to move them about as you accomplish your specific goals.

In the end, we’re looking for areas of opportunity we can act on in our marketing, messaging, or advertising.

The fun begins

I’d like to reiterate that there are probably more advanced data collectors that you could use, but my process is aimed to be fast and generally free. You can make this as agile as you’d like, feel free to add or remove any of these steps.

The video overview

Step 1 Google The basics

First thing you want to do is open up a private window of your browser, in my case Chrome, to Google your competition. Use a private browser window to avoid any cached search or Google+ juice that may alter your unbiased search.

Opportunity:

Discover their social profiles.

Find valuable links and see if you can achieve the same kind.

Discover where they are having conversations and jump in.

Find unique press release or product reviews and outreach to similar sites.

Identify general Google juice (p.s. try other search engines as well)

Step 2 Google site index/search

Next up in Google land, how much content does your competition have indexed? Not only is this a fast way to see a sitemap of your competition, it’s a great strategy for your content marketing efforts. Will you be able to create more or more targeted content than them?

Step 4 A head-to-head comparison

This tool might be enough for you to fly with and turn my 10-minute drill into a 30-second sprint. Similarweb will compare your search traffic and social traffic against a website of your choice. It’s limited on the free search, but still provides a good enough evaluation for me.

Opportunity

How do we stack up?

Can I win in organic, social, or referral?

How do we stand in terms of overall traffic?

What are common anchor tags and is there opportunity there?

Step 5 Link diving

Much like the tool mentioned above, the free version is limited, but still very useful. Here were getting much more technical in terms of domain score and backlinks, but it’s still another fine way to gather referral opportunity in my book.

Opportunity

Can I get backlinks from similar sites?

How many links are they getting overall?

Are they trending up or down?

Step 6 Find their most shared content

Same rules apply as before, limited at the free level but still useful. Here we want to see a snapshot of their most shared content on social channels. This will prove if they are active in sharing their content and which articles received the most shares.

Opportunity

What type of content scores them the most shares? Can we compete?

Do they have an active social following?

Do I similar content that I can update and relaunch?

Rinse and repeat

Now that you’re armed with a simple workflow and your competition board, it’s time to build your database.

Go forth and identify your competition and your areas of opportunity. Remember this, the process isn’t a silver bullet to winning their market share. You still need a damn good product, with exceptional customer support, clear messaging and you must know who your target customer is.

Wrap all of that together, put a bow on it and you’re off to the races. Easy right?

If you want to learn more about market research, branding, and profiling your business subscribe to my newsletter.My free podcast series on website redesign is about to launch — stay tuned!

]]>https://mattreport.com/reverse-engineer-competition-10-minutes/feed/1Minimal Viable Podcasthttps://mattreport.com/minimal-viable-podcast/
https://mattreport.com/minimal-viable-podcast/#commentsTue, 20 Jan 2015 15:58:07 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=6044I listen to a lot of podcasts. In fact, my Stitcher app reports that I have over 1,000 hours of listening time since I started using the service. That doesn’t count when I had used iTunes, listened directly on a website or the hours of YouTube channels I consume.

I love podcasts. I love listening and learning. I also love the craft and production a show host bakes into her audio. Shows like Alex Bloomberg’s Startup, only 12 episodes in, is set to disrupt this decade old market. By delivering great story telling, mixed with quality production and editing, the listening experience is elevated to a whole new level.

Is this the world of podcasting to come? Do we all need to be this prepared and refined before we hit publish?

Starting your first podcast

If you’re not familiar with MVP as it relates to the startup world, you can read this. Minimal viable anything, is the act of creating something (product, etc) fast with some basic research that validates the market need along with the intent to launch and iterate.

Launch, test, feedback, iterate — something like that.

Can you launch a podcast the same way? Sure you can. In the rest of this article, I’ll outline the necessary steps to launching a Minimal Viable Podcast.

Define the topic. Set the audience.

As an MVP, you probably want to avoid a broad topic like entrepreneurship. Before you mention, WordPress entrepreneurship as a topic, that’s still too broad. You want to go levels deep — but still have a topic you can carry a 5 to 15 minute conversation with. Spend some time researching a potential audience or set of customers. What are they talking about and what are some pain points they constantly bring up?

That’s 6 levels deep, but a big target to go after. So what could we talk about?

How to use MailChimp

E-mail marketing best practices with MailChimp

Mobile and e-mail

Connecting apps to MailChimp

Success stories with MailChimp

You see where I’m going with the different topic ideas, which should spill over to defining an audience. This is useful for your own client base, growing a new client base, and finding the do it yourselfers that are looking for solid advice.

Time per episode?

Shoot for 5 – 15 minutes.

Podcasting is a lot of hard work, especially once you get into editing 30+ minutes of conversation — never mind if you add video into the mix. For now, stick with audio and keep that conversation short. Focus on publishing and promoting your content, not deep dive conversations with lots of audio bumpers.

If you’re still using my MailChimp example, you could have an episode talking about their new dashboard or recap your best performing campaigns. Whatever it is, short, sweet, and to the point.

Hardware? Software?

You can read more about what I use in How to start a podcast. For our MVP, keep your investment basic. A decent mic or a room that has very little echo should do the trick — for now.

What? No iTunes?!

Nope, not for our MVP.

Loading up to iTunes requires more than what the rules of the MVP allow us. You’ll need artwork, channel description, file hosting, and so on. There’s no time for that!

My first go-to service would be Soundcloud. It’s super-easy to use, it’s mobile friendly, and you can eventually upgrade to the Pro version which will get you podcasting capabilities. You can use the embedded sound player on your website and people can subscribe via the app. You’re covering a lot of bases for very little overhead.

Another alternative would be using your own WordPress website. With the new media interface for audio/video, you’d be set to publish without even having to sign up to another service.

The most important part: The next 30 days

Let’s go over our checklist:

Tight topic

Little to no editing & production cost

5 to 15 minute episodes

Use an easy publishing/hosting service

Spend time promoting

Iterate

Give yourself a goal to hit.

In 30 days, can you drive enough interest and traffic to make this a real thing? If you’re up to it, start a journal about your process, use it to look back on what worked and what didn’t. At this stage of your MVP you want to spend more time promoting it and testing it’s legs before you commit all the way. Gathering feedback from your audience as soon as you can, is a must— even if the only listener is your mom.

In the end, you don’t have to be afraid of competing with the Bloomberg’s of the world. Starting small and staying committed is half the battle in this space.

Are you starting a podcast this year?

]]>https://mattreport.com/minimal-viable-podcast/feed/1Andrew Youderian of the eCommerceFuel podcasthttps://mattreport.com/andrew-youderian-ecommercefuel/
https://mattreport.com/andrew-youderian-ecommercefuel/#commentsFri, 16 Jan 2015 15:28:51 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=6028I don’t recall exactly how I stumbled across Andrew’s podcast, eCommerceFuel, but when I did I was hooked.

Here’s an entrepreneur talking strictly about the e-commerce market, with a strong focus on physical goods. Normally in our space, we’re hearing all about the ins and outs of digital product sales, so it was refreshing to hear how traditional store-fronts are doing this. All the while, he’s not even a WordPress user! Hard to imagine right?

In today’s discussion, we’ll cover why Andrew has recently switched to Shopify from Magento and his thoughts on WordPress as an e-commerce platform. As a Youderian fan, I was really excited to record this episode so I hope you really get something out of it.

Viewing options

Feedback welcome

Previous Matt Report Episode mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/andrew-youderian-ecommercefuel/feed/0Embracing businesshttps://mattreport.com/embracing-business/
https://mattreport.com/embracing-business/#commentsWed, 14 Jan 2015 14:02:22 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5984Today, I’d like to talk about embracing business. As creators of product, we’re always after the shinyobject. If you’re like me, we’re constantly chasing the opportunity. Chasing an opportunity leads to a lot of conversations, hanging out at events, and spending time prepping your story. All the while we’re building the product, adding features, and pulling the 16 hour shifts.

We’re out there beating the streets and setting the world on fire. Before you know it, we’re making sales and that client list is growing. Naturally, we are embracing social and talking to everyone, who has time for business?

Hopefully, us.

Why do so many folks hide from Business?

If you’ve spent anytime in the WordPress space, especially the entrepreneurial side, you know who I’m talking about. He’s the man that has blessed us with so many passionate stories and lessons on business. Here’s what I derive from his tweet yesterday:

So many of us spend time talking our game, building our product, and thinking of the promotion — we forget the lackluster world of operations, support channels, and team building.

Not that the latter is boring or dull, but for a go-getting business owner, it’s just not as flashy. It’s the stuff that ends up on the to-do list getting pushed out from week to week.

I really should start tracking my hours on this project.

Support docs? Yea…I’ll get to those.

Is my pricing sustainable?

My code looks like spaghetti, I should really hire a developer to help.

These are just some rudimentary areas of business we shy away from. There are larger aspects of business like insurance and legal coverage that push us further into the “I’ll get there eventually” netherworld.

If you’re doing a weekly journal, now is a great time to review the business aspects you have been dodging.

Selling? You’re not selling.

Guilty as charged.

Look up to the right-hand corner. You should see a banner for my product Conductor. If you’ve been reading the last few days, and especially my year in review, you know about my product, now.

But for the last two years, I’ve been guilty of not selling myself.

I was the example Chris gave. I showed up every week and ran a podcast predicated on helping people with their business, but I did nothing about mine.

Just because you’re making the noise, doesn’t mean people know who you are.

In fact, towards the end of 2014 I had a few larger agencies reach out to me and ask me if I wanted a job. A job?! I have my own agency! How would they know? Recently, I talked to a Matt Report listener who told me he had heard me mention it in some of my episodes, but never distinctly knew I ran a real business.

]]>https://mattreport.com/embracing-business/feed/3Embracing Socialhttps://mattreport.com/embracing-social/
https://mattreport.com/embracing-social/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 17:18:41 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5971I’m always surprised to find digital business owners that are not social savvy.

Actually, maybe I’m not anymore. I couldn’t begin to tally the amount of no response situations I find myself stumbling into. Be it an e-mail or a DM, there’s an alarming amount of business owners that just are not embracing social.

If millionaire, 400+ employee agency owners like Gary Vaynerchuck can do it, as well as billionaire’s like Cuban — you can too. In fact, I’d argue a very strong case that you’re going to be sorry in a year or two.

We’re moving more and more into the age of reputation business building — are you ready?

Why do you find social so difficult?

Last night I had the opportunity to appear on Episode 39 of the WP Round Table podcast and discuss how I do things differently. I do a lot with my agency and with my products and it isn’t easy. I run with a lot of irons in the fire, which is natural for today’s entrepreneur. Shiny object syndrome is very real and I fully embrace that as a weakness of mine while on the other hand, see it as a strength.

Part of this daily chaos is engaging friends, colleagues, and followers on Twitter. When I was asked how I planned my day, I certainly didn’t outline a time box plan for Twitter engagement. It’s just something I do in a passive way.

I enjoy having conversations and banter with others. It’s also a way to keep tabs on opportunity as it arises. While you have to get out of your seat to grow your business, the real-time dynamics of Twitter can be just as fruitful.

But why do so many people find social so difficult or at the very least — not valuable?

The point of being on social is for the conversation. Good or bad, it’s relationship building that is hands down most valuable thing you can do, in my humble opinion. I understand there are certain health risks, but I’d argue that running a business itself is 10x the risk/stress versus engaging in a troll conversation.

Your social fix

Here’s some advice for getting started on either platform as a solopreneur running your digital business:

Hold a Google Hangout and bring the chat to Twitter

Call it a webinar, a podcast, or a web show at the end of the day it’s video content creation at it’s finest. You’re creating evergreen content that can be reused on many platforms and you’re audience building.

By taking the conversation to Twitter, you can use a branded hashtag for your product, like I do with #condcutorplugin.

Look at that, you’re killing two birds with one stone.

Join a group that fits your market

If you’re into selling WordPress products or services and you’re not a member of Advanced WordPress group, you’re missing out on some good conversation.

Sure, it get’s a bit spammy and very low-level (opposite of what the name implies) but they have the best admins that I’ve ever seen in a group like this. They keep the ship going in the right direction, much better than I do in the Google+ WordPress Entrepreneur group.

It’s also very easy to engage in a group from your mobile device, so no excuses.

Get in the habit or get left in the dust

I don’t want to tell you that you have to make time to engage with people, because that’s forcing your hand.

If you’re not naturally interested in having conversations with others, especially when you can gain important feedback on your product, you’re doing it wrong. You simply cannot hide behind your computer screen and look at Google Analytics and Sublime Text editor for the life of your business.

Imagine going to a WordCamp and not having 1 single conversation. What was the point of attending?!

As we move into the reputation economy, not just in WordPress, but in all of tech startup life — how will you engage with your audience?

Why play in someone else’s sandbox when you can have your own?

I know what you’re going to tell me: “A high performer will still find inroads to success.” 110% Agree. So I’ll share another high performer that I follow closely, Jason Calacanis.

Sure he’s got some money to rebuild, but he’s also got a massively passionate following from This Week in Startups — including yours truly.

He also has a massively successful Angel List backing totaling $1.8 million from 497 backers as of this writing. Why? Because he consistently builds his audience through the show and through his events.

So while your building your business, stay in touch with us. We don’t want to hear from you when the ship is sinking. If we enjoy your product, we want you to keep in touch. We’re real customers and we’re happy to help.

]]>https://mattreport.com/embracing-social/feed/0How to journal for sanityhttps://mattreport.com/journaling/
https://mattreport.com/journaling/#commentsMon, 12 Jan 2015 18:29:58 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5960All too often we get lost in thinking about creating content for a larger audience to consume.

We worry about headlines, retweets, and shares. Content is king and it’s the hottest advice for driving traffic to your website in today’s new search optimization world.

The thing is, it doesn’t really help our well-being. Sure, checking off “publish blog post” on your Wunderlist might make you feel accomplished in that moment but what about the long-term?

The weekly review is very important to me. It makes me feel in control and that I’ve covered all the bases for the upcoming week. By taking all of the floating ideas in my head and getting them onto paper (or digital) I can rest assure that I have action items to move forward with for the upcoming week.

How journaling can help

This isn’t rocket science and I’m sure plenty of you do this now, but I’m going to start journaling every week.

In fact, I already do it for my food journal, which I keep for my workout plan. Sounds great right? Well, this past week’s diet has looked as if I were a teenager growing up in the late 90’s. Chinese food there, slices of pizza here — oh candy? You bet.

It’s the act of talking to myself that I think is very powerful. I don’t have to write it for you or anyone else to consume. It’s just me, myself, and I:

Good Saturday bootcamp session

1 hour+ of ping pong

32oz of water

2 Slices of toast with PB and Banana

3 Slices Pizza 2 Meat Pies Lots of chips couple pieces of candy

3 beers

3 days in a row of eating like shit.

That was my food journal entry on January 10th. I had a great morning workout followed by some table tennis with my brother and then — the Patriots game came on. All down hill from there, as I noted at the end of the day’s note.

As you can see, it’s not complicated. It’s not lengthy. This is what I did and this is what I felt like. Six months from now I can revisit this month and see where I’m at in terms of my goals. Down 15lbs for those of you wondering.

Apply it to business

My weekly Evernote review includes just a handful of major weekly goals I’m after. It starts with business moves I need to make, marketing efforts I should accomplish, and maybe 1 or 2 product ideas to act on. Other than that, I’m no longer letting my to-do list dictate wether or not my week is a success. You end up drowning yourself that way and not appreciating what it is you already have.

Future self meet past self

This is the biggest benefit of all.

Being able to dive back into the archives of your thoughts and feelings. Learn about what was going on in that moment that made an impact to the state you’re in now (the future.)

Why did your product end up this way?

What helped you lose weight?

What was the market saying to you when you launched?

While I know this is fairly obvious to some, it’s new to me. For those of you looking to a feel a bit more in control — give it a go — I hope it helps you.

How to get started

My 2 cents if you didn’t already know how to get started:

Do it. Bet you didn’t see that coming? Seriously, pick 1 day a week as your review week and put it in on your calendar. My day is, Sunday.

Journal with something that keeps you in focus. For me it’s Evernote and I’ve also tried Simplenote. I hear that other people love Day One.

Categorize your journaling. I split mine into health/fitness & weekly business. I think it’s just easier to go back and dig into your data that way.

Remember it’s about you, not them. This means there are no rules. You don’t have to worry about the length of your content or if Google will index it. One word or one-thousand words, it’s just for you. Profanity and all.

Have you been keeping a running journal? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

]]>https://mattreport.com/journaling/feed/2Episode 100https://mattreport.com/100/
https://mattreport.com/100/#commentsThu, 08 Jan 2015 17:15:06 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5934In just over two years time, I’ve finally accumulated 100 published iTunes episodes of the Matt Report. It’s been a fun ride and I’m looking forward to the next 100.

The WordPress podcasting space is very interesting. It’s getting more competitive as I predicted and more WP focused podcasts continue to come to the airwaves. In fact, read David’s post and how he predicts we are (or should) mature this year. I’d venture to guess probably another 3 or 4 (podcasts) will hit before the Q3 mark of 2015.

Lots of inventory for a small market of interested listeners. I’ll reiterate, it’s very interesting.

Take someone like John, blanketing the coverage of the entrepreneurial space and producing $250k+ in monthly revenue. Is it all about revenue? Certainly not, but podcasting is a grind and at some point a host needs to keep food on the table. Sponsorship is something I’ve always wrestled with especially since I have product to sell.

It will be interesting to see how many of us are here in 2016.

2014 Matt Report Year In Review

I think the answer is, it depends. Back to the WordPress podcasting space.

I’ve done a lot of WordPress podcasting content, even outside of this show. At the end of the day, my agency clients don’t care that I do this, just that I know how to deliver what they need in a project. A majority of Slocum Themes and Conductor Plugin customers do not know about this podcast either — should they?

Does it matter that we talk about WordPress, or is it just the gateway to building an audience?

I’m talking pure business here. Again, back to that bottom line thing. If advertisers are going to laugh at us and direct sales take a toll on our soul — is this an effective channel for WP podcasters to impact their bottom line?

In other words, how sustainable are WordPress podcasts?

I don’t have the answer for you yet. I do know that the podcast has opened doors for me in the WordPress networking space, but so could have blogging and so could have — ahem — networking.

So to the 3 or 4 of you that are starting your new WordPress podcast this year, do something different.

]]>https://mattreport.com/100/feed/6The Precursor to Greatnesshttps://mattreport.com/precursor-greatness/
https://mattreport.com/precursor-greatness/#commentsThu, 01 Jan 2015 18:53:45 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5874It’s that time of year again where everyone is setting out to achieve some new goal.

Be it health and fitness or reorganizing their business aspirations. Noise will fill the twittersphere of blogging challenges (we’re doing in the Pro membership) and personal fitbits will be alerting us of our friend’s step count.

But here’s what I’m worried about, to some this is motivation and to others, this is depression.

These can be the dark times.

Entrepreneurs or small business owners that have been in the game month-after-month or 3 years in still struggling to make it. “Everyone is doing better shit than me.” or “Look at the money they are making! Why can’t I?”

The new social has amplified everyone else’s success while making yours seem insignificant.

Want proof?

My friend Pippin has one (two?) of the most popular WordPress products in the market. He recently published his earnings for 2014 — North of $700k.

Why we fail

As I write this, I’m sitting in my local coffee shop staring at some awesome looking pistachio muffins. I want one. I love them.

But! I want to lose weight. I want to become stronger and faster. NO MUFFIN!

Oh, but it would taste so good, right? Grilled with butter. Another coffee? DAMN IT!

It would be so much easier to indulge in this rich buttery muffin goodness. I would be comfortable eating one or twelve of them. It’s easier to eat it and satisfy my brain, than to fight the urge and go find some protein.

Failure is calling my name. In times of darkness, it’s easy to give in.

You want to lose weight, but it’s easier to not diet and exercise.

You want your business to grow, but it’s easier to not get out of your seat and make a sale.

You want more product sales, but you’d rather spend time iterating.

You want more, but you do less, because it’s comfortable.

How to fix your brain

First and foremost, I’m not a psychologist or some motivational speaker. However, these are the guidelines and experiences that have helped me with depression during my dark times.

Look WTF business we’re in!?!

There are people in worse professions than us. There are people that can’t afford to purchase a laptop to even begin to do what we do.

Do we really have it that bad?

While you worry about the Chris Lema’s of the world blogging about you, believe me, there could be worse things on your agenda.

Take solace in the fact that our craft does not put our life in harms way. We can build very comfortable lifestyles from behind a computer and a Twitter handle while others are not afforded this opportunity.

You’re clear to pivot

I have a metric-shit-ton of ideas.

I’m sure you do too. Often we’re consumed by the Zuckerberg syndrome of trying to invent something world changing. You might not even realize it, but you’re dwelling on too many details or features.

My tagline of “content first layout builder” for WordPress — yea, I get it — but does my customer? Am I over engineering my value prop?

People will begin to purchase from you and send work your way when they clearly understand what it is you’re capable of. Did you know that three years of blogging and podcasting here and people still don’t know I own a digital media agency?

If you’re in this situation, start to pivot.

That doesn’t mean you throw out your product. It means you change your messaging or talk to a new set of potential customers and then measure the success. Stay dynamic and agile or run the risk of becoming stale.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

If you want to start a business, look at what other successful businesses do first. There are very few — if any — unique ideas left in this world. We’re all “inspired” by someone else’s art, so why are we kidding ourselves?

Proven products and business models, are — well, proven. There’s nothing wrong with creating a similar product. Apple isn’t the only smartphone in town. Conductor isn’t the only layout builder for WordPress.

When you go to market, your customer will understand what it is and your specific value prop.

Again, don’t sweat all of the details. 80/20. Make it simple stupid. Yadda yadda.

Talk to someone

Here’s what we don’t do often enough, ask someone for help.

It’s embarrassing and just as challenging as running the business. It’s hard to admit struggle or potential defeat, but we’ve all been there and no one has a roadmap for this journey.

How can I help?

If you’re on my newsletter, I always ask you to hit reply and ask me a question.

Invest a fraction of your client services income for a year’s access to people like you. Go Pro.

I’m sorry, you have to put in the work

Come clean with yourself and realize you have to put in the work. If you’re not, try harder or re-read the lessons above.

You might not be cutout for this ride and that’s okay. I often wonder how much more successful I could be if I stepped out of the world of client services and digital product.

Maybe you’re following someone else’s candor of success and you don’t even realize it.

Will I read about your greatness or your struggle?

It’s time to get on with our 2015 and for those of you living in the darkness — it’s not as bad as you think.

If you need help, reach out to me.

I believe that those of us who forge ahead will find the greatness we’re after.

I’m going to take the Conductor revenue we earned and thank our customers for each and every dollar that they’ve invested with us. It’s going right back into R&D for a better product as we march forward.

I’m making 2015 the greatest year ever. I have no choice, I’m getting married.

Did you quit your cushy day job for extravagant visions of the 4 Hour Work Week? Perhaps you are purposely driven to help others accomplish their goals through consulting and technology.

Whatever might be at the root of your calling, today’s guest will put you in your place. He’ll challenge you to think of the why you’re doing what you’re doing. Force you to realize that no one other than yourself — not even me — can help you achieve your level of success. So where did he learn these lessons?

Jail.

Still interested? I thought so. Meet my good friend, Clint Warren.

The Hustle

I remember my first talk about the Matt Report podcast back at WordCamp Boston 2012. There was this jacked dude, sitting in the front row, with laser beams in his eyes. I tend to walk side to side during my presentations. I don’t know why, it’s just this thing that I do. As I moved around the floor, he didn’t drop eye contact for one single second, which lead me to wonder:

Is this guy going to rush tackle me?

Is he calling bullshit on everything I’m saying?

After my talk was finished, I saw him approaching me. Shit. Here we go. Can I hide behind Jake? He reached out, shook my hand, and said that he really enjoyed the presentation. Phew! We chatted about his business and what he was up to. He had a real passion in his voice and determination to make it successful. If there was anyone in the audience that was going to make a splash, it was him.

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]]>https://mattreport.com/client-warren-interview/feed/4Turn your consulting service into a producthttps://mattreport.com/turn-your-consulting-service-into-a-product/
https://mattreport.com/turn-your-consulting-service-into-a-product/#commentsWed, 26 Nov 2014 17:51:31 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5723I invited my good friend, Brian Casel, to return to our airwaves and teach us a new lesson — productizing.

Brian, like most of us, started as a “web designer” then made the shift to product via Restaurant Engine. This is not — let me repeat — not an easy task. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know this is something that I’m working on day in and day out.

In this episode, we’ll dive into his latest launch, Productize. It’s a based on a very popular hybrid model of today’s digital product offering. Brian is offering up the course content with a healthy mix of video, consulting, and private membership. Sound familiar?

If you’re looking to productize your consulting services , this episode is for you. Join us as we unpack the methods of productizing and how you can apply this to your business.

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Resources mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/turn-your-consulting-service-into-a-product/feed/0Leadin plugin: Finding growth within Hubspothttps://mattreport.com/leadin-plugin-hubspot-interview/
https://mattreport.com/leadin-plugin-hubspot-interview/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 15:00:51 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5622Leadin is a project that was conceived and continues to be nurtured at the Hubspot headquarters. While there is a plugin to integrate WordPress with the Hubspot system plugin, Leadin was expressly created to use as a standalone WordPress marketing automation plugin for small businesses.

The creators, Nelson Joyce and Andy Cook, were given little guidance about exactly what functions Leadin should address and how it should work. The Leadin duo invested time listening to prospective users. They engaged in discovery conversations to uncover if the prototypes they had created solved problems that were meaningful to the audience.

Nelson and Andy had a variety of ideas to start but only one of their ideas generated the type of feedback and signals to move ahead and become more refined. The creators share how they gathered and compiled unfiltered user feedback by focusing on an interviewee’s actual usage scenarios not hypothetical ones.

Interview takeaway lessons for launching a product:

Get excited about the problem you are working on not the solution you have created.

Get paid early in the product development life cycle to validate your idea.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt, Nelson Joyce and Andy Cook times correspond to video
2:00 What is Leadin and what do you do everyday to work on it?
2:40 How did you decide on the product to pursue?
5:00 How did you get Darmesh Shah as your investor in your first start up?
10:30 Nelson, why did you partner with Andy?
11:25 How did you use sketch to start planning out the product?
13:30 What was your process like to get feedback from potential users?
16:00 What are the first steps to use when you are creating a solution to a problem with a new product?
17:35 How should you go about finding a problem to solve in the market?
19:25 how did you track and organize the feedback you were receiving?
21:30 Did you present several mockup products to your test audience?
24:10 What was the conversation like to select the product to move forward with in production?
25:40 Is there anything you would change about the early development process?
27:20 Do you think the customer would be more committed to the product if they had to pay for it early on?
28:45 What is the pricing model now for Leadin?
31:00 Are WordPress products priced too low relative to the value created?
32:00 What is next for Leadin?
34:25 Do you think the WP plugin repository has been critical to growth of Leadin user base?

Get notified when Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge #3 is actively being planned.

]]>https://mattreport.com/leadin-plugin-hubspot-interview/feed/1Growing a $40k+ monthly recurring WordPress support businesshttps://mattreport.com/growing-a-40k-monthly-wordpress-support-business/
https://mattreport.com/growing-a-40k-monthly-wordpress-support-business/#commentsWed, 05 Nov 2014 02:27:31 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5628This is not the first time Dan Norris has been featured on Matt Report. In November 2013 Dan applied and was accepted as one of the 4 business contestants featured in the first Matt Report WordPress Startup challenge. In this interview Dan gives a glimpse into the progression at WPCurve and his other active projects.

Dan explains how it is possible to run a successful business supporting WordPress users and business owners for 14 months before attending his first WordCamp in September 2014. At WordCamp Sydney Dan was a presenter of workshop: The 7 Day Startup, How to build a scalable WordPress business in 1 week. His book 7 Day Startup was successfully released on Amazon around the same time as his first WordCamp experience.

Dan emphasized that it is not necessary to focus early in your business’ life cycle to find the perfect tools cover all future growth scenarios. Expect to find new tools to support your customers as your business evolves.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Dan Norris

(times correspond to video)
1:25 What has happened with WPCurve since you were on the Matt Report start-up challenge last year?
2:50 Can you tell our listeners a little bit about about each of the things you are involved with and how you manage your time among multiple businesses?
6:40 How do you look at starting up a business now?
9:40 How do you know it was the time to get away from your original manual processes in your business?

“Fix problems as they arise.”

19:40 Are you looking to not have your name so closely attached to the brand?
20:30 What is the day look like for Dan? How do you prepare for your day to create content?
22:25 How do you divide the responsibilities with your US based business parter?
23:30 Do you follow the WordPress news closely?
27:10 How was it to get exposure on ProductHunt.com?
30:30 What parting advice do you have for freelancerDan Norris WordCamp Sydney Slides
37:30 Where do you see yourself in 2 years?

Resources mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/growing-a-40k-monthly-wordpress-support-business/feed/4Explosive Business Growth with Zoe Rooneyhttps://mattreport.com/explosive-business-growth-zoe-rooney/
https://mattreport.com/explosive-business-growth-zoe-rooney/#commentsTue, 28 Oct 2014 19:31:05 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5630Zoe Rooney’s business niche has evolved into being known as the designer’s developer. Shaping a narrower focus has helped Zoe’s business grow in a sustainable way and has allowed her to work on the problem solving part of website projects she really enjoys.

Zoe’s primary specialty is websites for eCommerce product sales. While most of Zoe’s work on informational websites is built on WordPress,the actual eCommerce transaction functionality is built using a non-WordPress solution. Zoe has a multi-point rationale for reaching outside of the WordPress ecosystem to help clients sell their products.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Zoe Rooney
(times correspond to video)
1:20 Give us your 2 minute elevator pitch.
2:30 How did you become the designer’s developer?
4:30 Do you still go to designer focused conferences today?
5:45 How does the process work between you, the designer and the client?
9:30 How do you negotiate getting paid up front?
10:15 What are the characteristics of the ideal freelance designer you like to work with?
13:00 What do you do when the client requests a change to the project mid-stream?
14:45 How do you scope out the project with the designer?
16:00 What tools do you use to manage projects?
18:25 Are you planning to grow your business into an agency?
21:45 Do you use WordPress for all client projects?
25:00 how do you explain to client about the pricing to customize low cost software?
30:00 How can WordPress get better in the area of E-commerce plugins/systems?
33:00 What advice can you give to freelancer developers?

Resources mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/explosive-business-growth-zoe-rooney/feed/0How Blogo secured funding for a WordPress publishing apphttps://mattreport.com/how-blogo-secured-funding-for-a-wordpress-publishing-app/
https://mattreport.com/how-blogo-secured-funding-for-a-wordpress-publishing-app/#commentsTue, 21 Oct 2014 15:48:02 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5584Several years ago Amure Pinho started as a Blogo user and now is the CEO @GetBlogo.

Amure shares his experience with growing Blogo and provides insights for you to include as you fine tune your product offering. Invest in yourself before going after investors for your product. Get a good team together and produce a starter version of your product. Amure held Blogo Day, an event to highlight the first version of the product, and invited investors to attend. There is nothing like good product and interested users to get the interest of angel investors.

Look beyond what your users are doing directly with your product. Examine what other products and services are part of the workflow before customers use your product. Taking the time to get this deeper understanding can help you to be proactive in making connections and finding partners to integrate with your product.

The Blogo team escalated a relationship from being a fan of Evernote to becoming a partner of Evernote. Don’t sit back waiting for things to happen to get your product noticed. Be sure you are creating a two way street and be creating value for your partners.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Amure Pinho
1:10 How did you end up building a product around WordPress?
3:15 What was Blogo like before you took over the CEO role?
5:40 How is Blogo currently funded?
7:20 What words of advice do you have for freelancers that are doing client services to fund product development?
13:45 Is there a stigma connected to WordPress with angel investors?
18:15 How did you partner with Evernote?Blogo wins Silver Award at Evernote Conference 2014
25:40 What’s the difference between U.S. and International or Brazil start ups/entrepreneurship?

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.-Zig Ziglar

36:00 How did you determine Blogo’s price point?
41:30 How did your team come up with the design of GetBlog website and press kit?
43:45 What’s next for Blogo?

Resources Mentioned

Resources mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/how-blogo-secured-funding-for-a-wordpress-publishing-app/feed/2How to make it in WordPresshttps://mattreport.com/making-it-in-wordpress/
https://mattreport.com/making-it-in-wordpress/#commentsMon, 20 Oct 2014 14:31:16 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5604If you’ve been following me for a while, you might catch an undertone of hustle and hard work are at the core of my message.

It might be because I started working at the family business during the 5th grade or that launching a productany business aint easy.

I do what works for me and I don’t subscribe to the if you build it they will come model — in fact — no one person should. There are, however, those that get by using a systemized formula. Product fit + SEO + PPC + Heatmaps = .037 conversion rate, multiplied by the market index divided by the sun’s position = blah blah blah.

If that works for you, God bless you.

If you’re looking around at your industry and you’re trying to figure out “how to make it” you’re going to need to put in the work. You need to be you. You need to be confident and today’s video from Gary Vaynerchuck crushes that point.

A PSA from GaryVee

(remember, I told you so)

Started at the 2:38 mark, Gary answers a question from a listener:

How do very new & small channels gain a following when people don’t interact & we get like 5 views on our video and 3 r from us.

I know I get this question a lot.

I’m sure some of you reading this are thinking the same thing and wondering how you can get more traction in your business. Business development is the keyword in Gary’s message. Getting out of your seat and knocking on doors.

You might laugh at that — but it’s true.

I recently spoke at PrestigeConf and I shared my lessons as a car salesman turned software sales guy. Part of the talk was theory and part of the talk was actionable. I had someone approach me at lunch to say:

“Hey Matt, great talk, but I hear a lot of this “theory thing” being spewed a lot. Everyone says get out of your seat and hustle — but how do I do it?”

Hustle your face off 15 hours a day to get people to care. ~ Gary Vaynerchuck

Here’s my answer:

If you’re not confident enough in your abilities or product that you can’t knock on someones door and show them then you’re not ready.

If you’re not confident enough to shake someone’s hand at a WordCamp then you’re not ready.

If you can’t dig deep and expose yourself for better or for worse — you’re not ready.

There is no handbook or step-by-step to business development. Well, maybe there’s some stuffy middle-management corporate books you can buy, but nothing is going to teach you more than doing it.

Here, start with this:

Ask a designer to partner up with your developer skill set.

E-mail another agency looking to partner up.

Find other vendors that might align well with your market fit.

Opportunity is endless as long as you’re willing to reach for it. But if you’re looking for the easy-button to business development — you’re doing (and thinking of) it wrong.

Give 51% value and get 49% of the rest

(playing from the 5:03 mark.)

I love this. I mean, I really fucking love this.

Probably because I get hit up 15 times a week like Gary does with no offer of additional value. What will you do for me?

“But Matt, you just told me to knock on doors.” Yes, yes I did.

However, I’ve been building an audience for a while and what you’re after is exposure to that audience. In fact, I know this, because 80% of the cold e-mails I get end with: “I’d love to show your audience this.”

What about us WP media types?

I have friends like Chris and Brian that will write about you — but they say no a lot — they value their audience. I have smarter friends than myself like Carrie that will charge you to access her audience. Tom won’t write about you, but you can buy ad space on his WordPress blog.

Sure, this sounds like a rant, but I’m in a unique position to witness the cold PR moves that are obvious in every other industry happening behind the scenes in ours. Blanket e-mails going out in mass to WordPress media types (like myself) requesting exposure, write-ups, and product placements.

Not what they can do for us, but what we can do for them.

So if you’re considering this route for your business — where’s your 51%?

The WordPress “media” industry (if you can call it that) isn’t big enough for this kind of traditional tech news approach. Not yet anyway and a large reason for this is (sadly) — there’s not a lot of money to be made (Yet? Ever? I’ll keep questioning it.)

Let’s break this down:

It’s easy to approach the plethora of tech sites and blast out your PR letter. Their revenues are in the millions and have large sponsorships. There’s many publications and the market is much greater. Arguably, they are on the lookout for stories and welcome them delivered to their doorstep. A staff writer might pick it up, blast out 550 words, and send a link your way.

Your blanket e-mail gets a 10% conversion your PR strategy churns on.

Whereas the WP media industry does not have that luxury yet — if ever.

If there were one definitive news source for the WordPress space, it’s them. It’s the only WordPress media site that you can count on to get some form of WP news, nearly every day. It also took Matt Mullenweg to make this happen. He purchased the brand and pays staff writers, Jeff and Sarah, as Audrey Capital employees. (Learn more from my interview with Jeff.)

Now let’s look at Brian, founder of Poststat.us.

Brian has been a “freelance” WordPress journalist longer than I’ve been podcasting. He has one sponsorpartner to aide with revenue concerns. He is, just recently, dipping into his audience and asking how to find new revenue opportunity. It’s difficult, even for a veteran WP journalist, to find sustainable models in this space.

The point here? Our space isn’t as vast and exploitable as the valley tech space. It takes damn hard work to do what these people do and for enterprising startups to think they can gain access to this under the guise of community, is just, wrong.

Bring your value

Let’s wrap this up, shall we?

1. You have to work your ass off to build an audience, get attention, and get people to follow you.
2. You have to be confident in yourself and your product.
3. Be smart with your business development and look outside of the WP space.
4. Bring your value to both sides of the table. To the consumer and to the media.

We’re not [WP Media] big enough yet and I’m not sure if we ever will be.

If you want exposure you’re going to have to earn it or sponsor it. I’ll let other media sites define what their earned rapport and monetary level of sponsorship means to them.

The point is, in this community, you shouldn’t expect hand outs and you should value your ambassador and their audience. No one wants to wants to read, watch, or listen to the same regurgitated message.

Not my audience anyway.

I want to hear from you in the comments. What are you doing to provide value to both sides of the table?

]]>https://mattreport.com/making-it-in-wordpress/feed/8How to improve your customer’s WordPress experiencehttps://mattreport.com/customer-wordpress-experience/
https://mattreport.com/customer-wordpress-experience/#commentsMon, 13 Oct 2014 21:12:27 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5426For Tracy Levesque co-owner of Yikes, the details make a difference in the delivery. Beyond adding a client’s logo to the WordPress login screen, it’s about really listening to how your client will use the new WordPress website you are creating for them. Tracy explains how she fine tunes the dashboard elements to give comfort and ownership to her client. By changing small details of the dashboard, it can speed up the onboarding and training process. The admin settings can speak in the client’s terms instead of the standard WordPress jargon (which is often meaningless and possibly confusing to the users that may be new to WordPress).

Yikes is a thriving family business. One of the two main business segments is focused on WordPress: creating custom themes for clients, giving back to the WordPress community in several ways, and supporting a free plugin with more than 50,000 downloads. Tracy and her wife Mia, as business partners, strive to balance the challenges of separating work life and home life.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Tracy Levesque
1:30 Tracy please give us your 2 minute elevator pitch
2:00 Do you talk about WordPress to your clients and in your agency life or do they not care and just want a solution?
2:40 What is it like for folks to hear about WordPress in the early stage selling process?
3:40 Do you feel like WordPress is becoming more of a household name with your clients?
4:45 How have you focused on non-profits?
5:40 What do you think non-profits are looking for with agency partners?
9:30 In your agency, what is team Cold Fusion and team WordPress?
12:00 How do you deliver your WordPress websites?
15:45 How did your Easy Mail Chimp Forms plugin get created and how do you maintain the plugin in the context of agency life?
19:30 Matt reads a review of the Easy MailChimp plugin from 2013.
21:50 How do you manage agency life as a family business?

Our skillsets and personalities really complement each other in this business.

26:45 How important is client communication?
28:30 How did you get involved in Girl Develop It?
30:15 What are you speaking about at WordCamp San Francisco 2014?
30:40 What parting advice would you give to our audience?
33:00 What did you contribute to WordPress version 4.0?

Agencies are growing rapidly while the field for developing and investing in WP product surges. As the market matures, I see a lot of opportunity for startups and veteran businesses alike.

WordPress support services, in particular, is one vertical in this space enjoying a nice up-and-to-the-right ride right now. So much so, that former WebDevStudios employee Shayne Sanderson, founder of Maintainn, is headed back to his alma mater.

I had the chance to sit down with Lisa Sabin-Wilson, partner at WDS, to talk about the companies acquisition of Maintainn at PrestigeConf over the weekend. Shayne also stops by to share his experience from the other side of the table.

The value of support & services

As the founder of a WordPress agency myself, I certainly see the need for a company to have a support & services offering.

A majority of the WordPress projects we launch are for clients that are brand new to the WP ecosystem. Not only are they learning how to use the popular CMS platform, but also look to expand their web property opportunity.

It’s in this secondstage that they begin to find their legs.

Either their first launch iteration begins to mature or they see new opportunity with the platform we’ve built them. Typically, that’s when the support calls come in and maintenance requests begin to gather. This can be a superb second stream of revenue right next to your project based income.

It’s also often overlooked as a great customer support tool. You don’t want launch your client into the wild and let them fend for themselves.

My interview with WebDevStudios and Maintainn

Lisa Sabin-Wilson of WebDevStudios

I had the chance to talk to Lisa while we were both in Minneapolis this weekend.

I will admit that it was slightly uncomfortable to open up my books like that – but it’s a necessary evil and something that has to happen if you’re at all interested in being acquired now, or in the future.

What new areas of opportunity are you excited for with the Maintainn acquisition?

Acquiring Maintainn gives us the ability to confidently extend our support and maintenance offerings at WebDevStudios – not only for our existing client base, but for new clients, as well as existing and new clients through Maintainn. It’s not that support and maintenance is adding anything new to our purview at all – we are, however, finding the demand for ongoing retainer agreements for support that encompasses simple updates and maintenance to more advanced level development and feature requests and all points in between.

Maintainn has an existing team and infrastructure already in place that allows us to slot that right into our existing workflow almost immediately for our clients while, at the same time, beefs up the bench strength for Maintainn’s existing (and new) service customers and gives them the confidence to really grow that side of the service, as well.

In terms of new opportunities with this acquisition? Time will tell and the sky is the limit – we are excited about all aspects of this acquisition.

This puts the WDS team at 32. Can you attribute your growth to something specific?

We’ve seen a great deal of growth in the past year in the area of enterprise client services. We’ve brought clients like Microsoft and the Discovery Chanel, as well as a few key government projects and higher education projects into our portfolio. These types of projects help us grow as developers, designers, as well as allowing us the financial security to grow our infrastructure confidently.

WebDevStudios remains, as always, bootstrapped – which is something we take a great deal of pride in. We’re excited about our recent growth and the outlook for additional growth in the near future, and Maintainn plays a large role in those plans.

Any words of advice for other business owners looking to acquire a product or service?

Communication! Acquisitions and mergers isn’t just about numbers and lawyers. Plan on spending some quality time with the team behind the company you are looking to acquire, especially if it is a situation, like Maintainn, where it is an ‘Acquihire’. Everyone should know exactly what they are getting into before any signatures go down on paper – – leave no question left unasked and no concern left untouched.

Acquisitions can be a pretty stressful time for both entities – and keeping the lines of communication WIDE open helps a great deal so that there are no last minute ‘gotchas’ or surprises and it ensures that expectations are equal across the board.

On the flip side, what advice would you share for founders looking to sell or be acquired?

At least in the WordPress community, the acquisitions that we’re seeing are all small business – – and sometimes, they are products or services run by one or two people. If you’re the least bit interested in being acquired in the future – you need to have all your ducks in a row and don’t be surprised when the interested party starts asking some pretty personal and private questions about things like finances, cash flow, taxes – – those details that you are used to keeping pretty close to the chest.

The acquiring party will want to know what your revenue looks like, so start keeping track of that – as well as P/L Reports (profit/loss) and be prepared to provide access to things like existing user base, analytics and proof of recent and recurring income.That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but I’m finding it can be a stressful thing.

When I merged my company with WebDevStudios in 2012, I will admit that it was slightly uncomfortable to open up my books like that – but it’s a necessary evil and something that has to happen if you’re at all interested in being acquired now, or in the future. Get those books in order!

Shayne Sanderson of Maintainn

Here are some thoughts shared by Shayne about the acquisition.

I’ve never been known as a “business guy” but I know how to work hard and can see those values in others.

What’s the size of the Maintainn team today and what do you contribute it’s growth from?

Currently Maintainn is a team of 5 and growth has come from necessity. We’ve grown pretty quickly in the last year and the need for talented designers/developers has grown along with that. I see nothing but more of this happening in the future!

What are you most excited about with re-joining the WDS team?

I’ve known the folks at WDS for a long time (and even worked there previously), and am proud to call them all friends. They have an incredible team and having that knowledge/work ethic available for Maintainn clients is pretty awesome. We really enjoy working with WDS and I’m very excited to working with them even more closely now.

As a founder, can you speak to the specific challenges of growing a company today?

Growing a company today can be tough. What might seem like a good idea could easily fall short and what you never expect to happen can, so my advise would be to be prepared as best you can. Be prepared for the growth but also for the downfalls because both will definitely happen at some point and can cripple you if you’re not ready.

Are there any WordPress specific challenges you’ve faced? Community or otherwise?

We face WordPress challenges daily, it’s our business model! Regarding challenges in general, I can’t say that I can think of any off hand. The community is great and I came in fairly early on (2006), made the best of friends and have had nothing but a good time since.

What do we have to look forward to for the future of Maintainn and what will your role be?

The future of Maintainn is very bright! I’m the founder of Maintainn and will also now be Director of Support under the new arrangement. With the resources available from WDS we’ll pass along every bit of that to our clients (new and old) – it’s going to be great. I can’t think of a better team to be joining and our offerings are just going to get better and better.

I often get asked how someone approaches an acquisition of their company or product. Can you offer us any insight from your recent experience?

Acquisitions can be tough. My advise would be to just make sure you’re ready, look at all sides and see where benefits/risk are. If all pieces fall into place correctly it can be a wonderful thing, just as this one is. I’ve never been known as a “business guy” but I know how to work hard and can see those values in others. Maintainn and WDS compliment each other well and with the work ethic on both sides, this was not a hard decision for me to make.

]]>https://mattreport.com/webdevstudios-acquires-maintainn/feed/0How to find your niche as a WordPress freelancerhttps://mattreport.com/how-to-find-your-niche-wordpress-david-bisset/
https://mattreport.com/how-to-find-your-niche-wordpress-david-bisset/#commentsMon, 06 Oct 2014 17:23:18 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5475Since the early days of BuddyPress plugin, David Bisset has focused his freelance developement business around integrating it into his highly customized client projects. He has been able to add value to his client projects by suggesting the addition of a social layer using BuddyPress during the early stage of development. Considering the additional specifications of BuddyPress in the early planning stage of a web project is important since it is more difficult to add later.

David Bisset is well-known in the WordPress community for the time and energy he has dedicated as one of the founding organizers of WordCamp Miami. WordCamp Miami celebrated it’s 5th anniversary in May of 2014. In 2013 and 2014 David included a BuddyCamp component in the WordCamp Miami program to create more conversations and learning about using BuddyPress.

In addition to organizing WordCamp Miami, David Bisset is an advocate for getting out to participate and organize local WordPress meetups and create working connections between WordPress professionals. The connections made at WordPress gatherings can be a source of new business for developers.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and David Bisset
(Times correspond to video)
1:20 Tell us about David Bisset.
3:20 What sparked the initial idea to start a WordCamp in Miami? How did starting WordCamp impact your career?
5:30 Why doesn’t the rest of the world know about WordCamps?
8:20 Should WordCamp advertising and marketing budgets be increased?
11:45 Why did you focus your freelance business on BuddyPress?

BuddyPress picked me.

15:15 How did you implement BuddyPress on a car parts website?
17:00 How do you introduce the social layer in BuddyPress into the project?
20:30 What should freelancers know if they will be working on a project that will include BuddyPress or a social component?
25:00 Do you have a minimum project price level?
27:15 What advice do you have for a freelancer that is struggling to find the right clients?

After speaking 20 conferences over the last year, Josh noticed a trend. He was bad at selecting good sessions at conferences, especially inexpensive, multi- track tech conferences. To solve that problem, the idea for Prestige conference was born. Two primary issues were addressed in the planning of Prestige conference:

Create focus around a single stream of sessions that all attendees would partake in.

Arrange to bring in the best speakers, not just those speakers that could afford to pay for traveling to the event.

The first Prestige conference “A premium interactive business and career development conference” is happening in October, 2014 but more locations and dates are already in the formulation stage. All of the speakers for the October 2014 conference are leaders in the WordPress community.

Josh’s professional development experience at Lemon.ly has parallels to his experience working on Prestige Conference. At Lemon.ly Josh Broton has been involved in creating solutions to in-house problems and refining those solutions into product offerings. Even if the product offering does not catch on in the open market, it still can have value internally.

Listen to this interview hear how to estimate a time budget if you are thinking about creating a new event to connect members of a new or established community.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Josh Broton
(Times correspond to video)
1:30 Who is Josh Broton?
3:00 What’s going on in the Dakotas?

Startups on the coast are making no money very loudly. Startups in the midwest are making alot of money very quietly.

5:00 What kind of splash are you trying to make with Prestige Conference?
12:25 What are the other goals for Prestige Conference?
14:30 What do you produce at lemon.ly and what is the profitable product that you are building?
16:40 At lemon.ly is the business model set up for bootstrapping product/app developement with client services at the same time?
18:50 Is product building to solve your own company need ingrained in the culture of lemon.ly’s?
20:45 How can you determine if problem is scalable or can be productized?
24:45 How do we launch a Beta round and do we charge for it?
26:45 What is the takeaway lesson for a freelancer or small agency is looking to launch a product?
28:00 What is the takeaway lesson for a freelancer or small agency is looking to start a conference?

Related MattReport Interview interviews

Definitions:

]]>https://mattreport.com/josh-broton-interview/feed/0How he turned blogging into his businesshttps://mattreport.com/interview-dayne-shuda/
https://mattreport.com/interview-dayne-shuda/#commentsThu, 18 Sep 2014 17:58:02 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5442Imagine you are working with new client and during your discovery meeting the business owner tells you they want to work with you to fix up their website, especially the area for to be used for blog posts.

The business owner shares their commitment to writing weekly content to increase awareness about their new product line. The content will be shared on their website, in an new email newsletter and on social media channels. You set up a nice space for the new content but after a few weeks you check back to find that nothing has been added beyond the original set of articles provided to you at the start of the project.

In a conversation with the business owner you find out that other pressing issues came up which diverted attention from creating the weekly articles.

In this Matt Report interview, Dayne Shuda of Ghost Blog Writers shares how his company helps business owners maintain their commitment to sharing regular updates with their target market. He takes a long term view on creating regular blog content for his clients. Dayne focuses his efforts into working with clients who want regular content created that can be used in various marketing channels but don’t have the resources to do it in-house.

Interview Dayne Shuda

Viewing

What happened during the conversation between Matt and Dayne
(Times correspond to video)
1:45 How do you find clients that need content work for their blog?
2:50 Is blogging the primary place to start with for content display?
5:20 How do you manage when a client asks for extra services that are outside your primary focus?
6:50 Do you remember the time you started to say “no” everything else besides creating blog posts?
8:30 How do you find partners to hand off work to?
9:45 Were you every reluctant to get out from behind your desk?
12:20 How do you onboard a new client especially for an industry you are not familiar with?
15:00 How do you educate clients who are fixated on the inexpensive approach?
17:40 How do you find clients that have a longer term approach to the project?
19:40 Do you use a questionnaire for clients to fill out before working with you?
21:00 How do you find freelancer writers to work with you in your business?
24:25 How do you manage a remote/distributed workforce?
27:00 What technology do you use for the displaying blog posts?
30:00 Is there one technical thing that WP could do better?

In today’s episode, I sit down with Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative and hash out what it takes to go from freelancer mode to agency mode. One of the lessons I’d like you to take away from this chat is sharpening your onboarding process.

That subtle, yet oh-so-important phase from the first e-mail contact up to price negotiations round. We’ll cover that and more in today’s episode!

Interview with Jennifer Bourn

Can you purchase one specific software package and get the magic key to organizing your business, getting more clients and generating more revenue? Acquiring a software package is just a the first step to creating a path or process called client onboarding. As Jennifer Bourn explains, she spent a year setting up the software package she selected for Bourn Creative with heaps of customized materials. She built a procedure to escort her carefully screened new clients through their journey of creating and launching their new website.

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What was discussed during the conversation between Matt and Jennifer Bourn
(Times correspond to video)
2:00 When did you change your mindset from being in the freelancer world to the agency world?
3:45 How important is trust when you are bringing on freelancers or part time employees?
6:10 What do you look for when bringing on a developer to a project
8:30 How do you introduce the team concept to the client?
10:45 What is your new client onboarding process like?
14:00 How and when did you realize you needed to charge for discovery process with clients?
17:00 What are the red flags that stop you from working with a client?
18:30 How do you structure your payment terms?
21:00 How did you decide that Infusionsoft was the proper long term solution for your business?
23:00 How does Infusionsoft replace the need for hiring additional staff members?
31:00 What is your best channel to find new clients?
32:20 What other software do you use that pairs well with Infusionsoft?

List of Resources Mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/jennifer-bourn-interview/feed/2Ozzy Rodriguez: Breaking up the Bandhttps://mattreport.com/ozzy-rodriguez-breaking-band/
https://mattreport.com/ozzy-rodriguez-breaking-band/#commentsThu, 04 Sep 2014 14:15:17 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5186Being a freelancer means you get to run your business your way.

More than likely you start by building your personal brand. You take a deep breathe and look at yourself in the mirror. Who am I? What do I offer? How can I deliver value? What is the purpose?

When you meet Ozzy, you get a feeling that this guy gets it. As well he should, being a seasoned WordPress freelancer and all. He’s been in the game a while and I want you to take away a few key lessons:

Confidence

Finding clients that fit your process

Have a purpose

I’ve had the amazing opportunity over the last two years to talk to a lot of amazing WordPress people — Ozzy is no exception. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Interview with Ozzy Rodriguez

Ozzy Rodriguez is known for his work as a Genesis-loving custom developer and co-host of the unique and sometimes irreverent WPBacon podcast. To keep things interesting, Ozzy works with a diverse client based from startups to dog walkers. Ozzy’s role as part of the WPBacon podcast started small and grew into being a co-host until the ultimate winding down of the program. WPBacon’s podcast started off with monthly educational programming. The audience requested more frequent episodes which the creators willingly accommodated.

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What was discussed during the interview
(Times correspond to video)
03:00 Why should someone new to WordPress use Genesis?
05:45 How can developers and implementors work together?
09:15 At what point do you conclude that Genesis would not be the right tool to use for a client’s project?
11:30 What steps should freelancers take to be noticed and found in the community?
16:00 What role does content marketing play in your business?
18:00 How did you decide which services to offer to your clients when you started out as freelancer?
21:30 How do you decide which clients to work with? Do you have a specific industry?
24:45 What’s the story behind the WPBacon podcast?
27:20 How did you differentiate guests and content of the WPBacon podcast stand from other WordPress podcasts?
31:00 What did you do to keep consistent publishing schedule for WPBacon podcast?
33:45 Are we still just talking to ourselves when we are podcasting about WordPress?
35:40 What are your words of advice to people thinking about starting a podcast?
36:50 If you could rewind, how would you build or run your business differently?

Let me know when more MattReport.com Pro content is published related to topics from this interview

[contact-form subject=’Podcast or Negative SEO courses’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Notify me when a course about starting and growing a podcast is available’ type=’checkbox’/][contact-field label=’Notify me when a course about recovering from a negative SEO attack is available’ type=’checkbox’/][/contact-form]

]]>https://mattreport.com/ozzy-rodriguez-breaking-band/feed/1Interview with Shawn DeWolfe: Share Cluster pluginhttps://mattreport.com/interview-shawn-dewolfe-share-cluster-plugin/
https://mattreport.com/interview-shawn-dewolfe-share-cluster-plugin/#commentsThu, 28 Aug 2014 20:30:11 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5167Shawn DeWolfe, co-founder of ThoseDeWolfes Creative, reaches his hand into both the WordPress and Drupal “cookie jars” depending on the nature of the project he’s working on.

With WordPress, you get the illusion that you can do something complex real fast.

In early July 2014, Shawn released his product Share Cluster plugin into the WordPress repository and also offers a premium version, Share Cluster Prime. Listen to this interview to learn why Shawn thought WordPress was the right choice for his plugin instead of creating it as a Drupal module and why sometimes using an off-the-shelf system is a wiser choice even when you have the experience to build something from scratch.

Interview with Shawn DeWolfe: Share Cluster plugin

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What was discussed during the interview
(Times correspond to video)
2:00 What is the biggest difference that you see in the use case of Drupal and WordPress, especially for large amounts of content?

There is a weird inverse relationship that happens with client work-the more money you ask for, the less trouble the project is.

9:30 Is there a clear difference between the work you do with Drupal vs. WordPress?
10:45 What would you want inside of Drupal that WordPress does really well? What would you want inside of WordPress that Drupal does really well?
15:40 What did you create Share-Cluster as a WP Plugin instead of Drupal Module
17:00 Is the WP market is easier to enter?
17:40 What was the experience like for you submitting the plugin to WordPress.org?
21:20 What are the immediate challenges you are working on for launching your product —ie marketing, pricing.
27:30 How will you manage the new feature requests and ideas related to Share Cluster?
28:45 If you could Rewind 1, 5 or 10 years what would you do differently with your professional life?

]]>https://mattreport.com/interview-shawn-dewolfe-share-cluster-plugin/feed/3Go slowly as fast as you canhttps://mattreport.com/interview-ben-fox/
https://mattreport.com/interview-ben-fox/#commentsFri, 22 Aug 2014 19:46:46 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5299Ben Fox co-founder of FlowPress, WPUniversity.com and Sidekick.pro shares smart ideas about pricing, building a team and having a greater vision for his new product offering.

Embrace and address the challenge of pricing your new product by talking directly to your prospective customers to fine tune your offering to the needs of your different customer segments.

Build a successful, sustainable product by finding engineers that are dedicated to your project and will stick with you for more than just the product launch.

Even if you start building a product around needs in the WordPress universe, consider if your idea has application beyond the WordPress circle.

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What happened during the conversation between Matt and Ben
(times correspond to video)
2:10 What’s happening with WPUniversity?
3:30 How do you balance your time between client services, product development and new business development?
5:10 What was the genesis of the idea for Sidekick Pro?
6:55 How did you set up your partnership?
8:40 What is it like working in an business incubator or accelerator?
11:20 What kind of advice did you get from the accelerator group when WPEngine contacted you?
13:00 How are you setting the pricing for Sidekick Pro?

It’s easier to price on the enterprise level

15:45 How are you getting feedback from customers?
17:30 How are you balancing/managing the customer’s requested features?
19:10 How are you using PivotalTracker to manage your process?
21:45 What is the biggest benefit to using PivotalTracker
23:40 How did you fairly assess what your team was capable of?
28:30 Why is it important to use a Service Level Agreement with clients?
32:00 What is a good way to craft a Service Level Agreement to use with your clients?
36:30 How much detail do you put in your statement of work (before the deposit is paid)?
41:15 How did you decide to reach beyond WordPress with Sidekick Pro?
47:00 What is planned for the EastMeetspress event?
[contact-form subject=’SLAs and contracts’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Let me know when there is a Matt Report ProCast available about creating service level agreements and contracts’ type=’checkbox’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

Marketing automation isn’t just for e-commerce or digital product sites. If you have a contact form that you depend on for leads — that’s the start of your funnel. In today’s startup world, we have a metric ton of data at our disposal. There are common 3rd party sources like, Google Analytics or MixPanel. We’re able to track user actions and place triggers for events from the likes of the Stream WordPress plugin by X-Team.

So, what do we do with all of this data?

We can port it all to a single reporting platform like SumAll or create our own custom analytics reports like my friend Brian does.

If you’re like me, you find yourself asking the more straightforward question, “Where did this lead come from and what pages did they view on my site before contacting me?”

I had the chance to meet the founders of this plugin at the local Boston WordPress meetup. They are located inside HubSpot (A proprietary marketing platform business) and part of their accelerator program for early startups.

Andrew and Nelson just released version 2 with a host of improvements and new features. I finally had the chance to check it out and it looks very promising.

LeadIn Plugin Review

I might be bias, but I’m over complex plugins, especially those for my marketing/sales needs.

I don’t want a million data points or complex actions/triggers to setup. I want purpose-built solutions. That said, I realize that adds complexity on the reporting end. When we start using a variety of tools, we have to look in a variety of places. This is why custom data reports can be complex and dashboarding platforms are a dime-a-dozen.

So far, Leadin looks to be doing a great job at giving me just enough and that’s the challenge they will face as it matures.

How to use LeadIn

Here’s a basic overview of how LeadIn will help you understand your visitors and gain valuable insights on how they found you.

A quick video

Here’s a fun edge case for LeadIn. In this video I show you the funnel someone took to cold e-mail me their product idea.

The Basic Notification

Lead visits your site.

Lead browses through pages to a contact form.

Lead submits the form, including e-mail address, you are notified of their funnel.

In my test site above, you can see that I came in from a direct source, browsed some pages to the contact form and then submitted the form. I receive that for every “lead” into the system.

The notification serves as a great quick overview for this new lead. There’s also something very gratifying about getting this data in my inbox.

Time to tag!

Tagging

Tagging is a smart way to group your leads. For example, if you sold a product online and had a pre-sales question form. One lead would be, a lead, the other would be a customer. Perfect for organizing your follow ups and understanding which segments are converting well.

If you’re selling many products or have various funnel sources, tagging will help organize the various segments. You can create as many tags as you wish and assign your leads to multiple tags.

Now that the lead is captured, what’s next?

Visitor history

In my opinion, this is the bread and butter of the LeadIn plugin.

LeadIn provides a clean and intuitive way for us to explore the traffic of a returning visitor. Here’s a few examples of why this is important:

Understanding how a visitor found your site. If you’re wondering which articles are ranking well in Google or if that guest blog post worked from months ago.

Repeat customers might keep returning to the same product page or blog posts. Have they converted yet?

That’s just a few of the reasons understanding traffic to your WordPress site can help.

Conclusion

There are a lot of tools out there and finding the right one isn’t easy.

LeadIn is still young and I expect some amazing things to come from this plugin. My only concern is that it’s under the umbrella of Hubspot, so, it should be interesting to see how it monetizes. Especially if any of the monetization comes with the cross-sell of users moving to the HubSpot system.

Aside from that, it’s still early days for LeadIn, even if it just hit version 2. Their “power ups” more commonly referred to as add-ons have a nifty corner pop-up that you can sync up to your Mailchimp. Albeit a bit confusing on how to set it up, it works like a charm once you have it there.

I’ll be using LeadIn moving forward to hone in on my marketing efforts for Slocum Themes and our up and coming Conductor plugin.

]]>https://mattreport.com/leadin-plugin-review/feed/2Troy Dean of WP Elevationhttps://mattreport.com/troy-dean-wp-elevation/
https://mattreport.com/troy-dean-wp-elevation/#commentsThu, 14 Aug 2014 18:43:43 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5125It has almost been 1 year since I met Troy Dean as a guest on his own WordPress podcast.

Shortly after that, I met him at PressNomics, where we became great friends and chased after the same guests for our audience. In between sessions, we plotted our podcasting world domination scheme. We’ve kept in touch talking strategy, doing a host-swap, and I made an appearance on his WP Think Tank show.

Today I’m honored to have him on my show to talk about how he got started, what his business is like, and ask the question — do we really compete with one another?

Viewing

Resources

]]>https://mattreport.com/troy-dean-wp-elevation/feed/3Dre Armeda joining WebDevStudioshttps://mattreport.com/dre-armeda-webdevstudios/
https://mattreport.com/dre-armeda-webdevstudios/#commentsThu, 14 Aug 2014 15:05:31 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5227The first time I virtually met Dre was when I co-hosted the popular DradCast web show.

Following that episode, we finally met in person at PressNomics in Phoenix Arizona. The whole experience was like meeting an old pal from college all over again. He saw me from across the room, charged at me (yes I was a bit frightened) and he gave me a big bear hug. At that point I knew he was a good dude and true to form from what we see online.

Back when I was setting up for my previous Matt Report interview with him, I was excited to dig into how Brazilian Jiu-jitsu steered his success in business and his personal life. Often, we find ourselves looking for a magic bullet for running a successful business — when hard work and discipline is staring right at us.

His interview proved that and more for the young entrepreneurs out there.

Today I’m excited to learn that he’s taking on a new challenge in his life, joining WebDevStudios as VP of Operations. He’ll be sure to strengthen the management team of Brad Williams, Brian Messenlehner, and Lisa Sabin-Wilson. After leaving Sucuri back in May, we all knew it wouldn’t be too long until he found a new home, and this looks like the perfect fit.

I am very excited to be taking on the role of VP of Operations at WDS. – Dre Armeda

The Force is strong

In the below interview, Dre articulates that mergers and acqui-hiring is a natural progression for our “little” WordPress world. In fact, we recently saw this with WP Site Care acquiring Audit WP and Chris Lema joining the folks at CrowdFavorite.

If you follow this podcast, many guests and myself included, always recommend some form of partnership. If you’re designer that can’t code, team up with a developer. If you’re a boutique WordPress agency, find a larger agency or advertising firm to work with. Heck, maybe there’s another WP shop out there willing to form a stronger allegiance!

Interview with Dre Armeda, VP of Operations at WebDevStudios

Give us the elevator pitch of your new role at WDS!

I am very excited to be taking on the role of VP of Operations at WDS. In the new role, I will not only work on operational responsibilities, but I will also be involved in business development, along with talent acquisition, and sales and marketing efforts.

What new challenges and goals are you excited for that are different from your past position?

WDS is a successful and established organization. I am very excited about that, and I’m very excited to become part of the leadership team that will continue growing WDS into it’s next stage. WDS is on a wonderful trajectory and I am eager to become part of the team during such an exciting time!

It seems like the top end of WordPress enterprise agencies are starting to shake things up. 10up recently brought on John Eckman as CEO, Chris Lema announced his new role at Crowd Favorite — now you. What does this mean for the WP ecosystem in your opinion?

Natural progression really. I would be concerned if we weren’t seeing these types of changes. I think this is still very early in this growth period of business in WordPress, and naturally we’ll see more ramp up as the economy in the space continues to expand. My senses tell me that we’ll soon start to see big moves from organizations outside of the WordPress space that really escalates growth in the PressNomics if you will.

I talk to a lot of small agencies. What advice would you give them level up their game and scale to WDS standards?

Don’t go at it alone. Expanding and growing means interacting and working together. I always say that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Don’t be afraid to talk to those already there, and don’t be afraid to take chances. Being completely risk adverse won’t get you to the next level.

I know it’s still early, but what advancements in WordPress or our ecosystem in general do you think we will see as the top end agencies grow?

I think we will see more collaboration between those agencies down the road enabling mind-blowing advances in the way the world uses WordPress. It’s exciting the things these agencies are doing for large companies now, but as we continue to drive into big business, we will reach bigger successes faster if we go at it together!

Let’s look into the future: As WordPress gets easier to use with more hyper-focused “flavors” like StudioPress Rainmaker, will the solo freelancer and small shop slowly become extinct? What’s your prediction for the WP services landscape?

What I can say is 22+ percent of the internet is powered by WordPress. There will always be a market for freelancers and small shops. There are already many very well-focused solutions out there for websites, and even before the advent of developing and managing your own website there were solutions that eased the pain. My feeling is we won’t see a decline in demand anytime soon, if anything we see an increase in complimentary services not services pushing the small guys into extinction.

Lastly, what does this mean for The Dradcast?

I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to you on a panel at WCMIA 2014. I said it then, and my take is the same. The internet would have to go extinct for the DradCast to go away. The show must go on!

]]>https://mattreport.com/dre-armeda-webdevstudios/feed/2Pat Flynn: Software as a businesshttps://mattreport.com/pat-flynn/
https://mattreport.com/pat-flynn/#commentsThu, 31 Jul 2014 08:52:49 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5046Want to know how to make $5,000 dollars in a weekend via a $10 Facebook ad?

Too bad. You can’t.

If you’re like me, you are probably so numb to these type of flash in the pan marketing schemes. Even more so, sick of seeing ads from “web marketers” that are renting 7 series BMW’s to shoot infomercials with. 1-click WordPress install, some FB ads here and a squeeze page there…

It’s so easy!

Pat Flynn is NOT that marketer, but he does use WordPress and he’s launching a new product for it. I’ve been a fan of Pat’s for a while now and I respect his approach to our industry. His authenticity bleeds into his brand which is something a lot of us are afraid to do. We’re going to talk about that and how this web marketer has transitioned to software as a business.

Sit back and relax — this is a great episode!

Interview with Pat Flynn: Smart Podcast Player

Pat Flynn is not a typical webmarketer. He is expanding his operation into the technology arena of webmarketing. In addition to his website being powered by WordPress, Pat engaged his developer to create a custom function that supported his own need of the for sharing his podcast content. After getting requests from his audience about the podcasting function, Pat decided to offer the function as a plugin. The plugin is appropriately named Smart Podcast Player. During the development of Smart Podcast Player Pat acquired a new appreciation about the amount of time and effort needed to product a quality WordPress software product.

Software takes time and money to create a great user experience. It’s not a quick way to make money.

Focus on a specific business niche. When you are able to speak in your customer’s language, you will be able to help them better define their problem and accept your recommended solution.

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What was discussed during the interview
(Times correspond to video)
1:45 What differentiates Pat from the typical web marketer?
4:30 How is Pat putting together a local team to scale his business?
6:30 What lessons did Pat learn from his recent DDOS attack? What good thing came out of it?

When you rely on your website to run your business, be sure you are proactive not reactive when selecting the supporting technology tools.

10:45 Is creating and selling software the next frontier in webmarketing?
15:00 How can you use a Minimium Marketable Event to engage your audience?
16:30 What are the legacy issues with offering lifetime support to earliest customers? What is a better approach?
21:15 What would Pat have done differently in selling the initial group of licenses for the podcast plugin?
24:00 How does Pat see his company growing into a software company?
26:15 Which resources does Pat use to keep new feature ideas organized and prioritized?
27:30 As a freelancer, how can you promote your WordPress business idea when you are very new to the marketplace?
31:15 After building the plugin, how has Pat’s perspective changed towards WordPress community?

List of Resources Mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/pat-flynn/feed/10Celebrating two years of The Matt Reporthttps://mattreport.com/celebrating-two-years-of-the-matt-report/
https://mattreport.com/celebrating-two-years-of-the-matt-report/#commentsTue, 29 Jul 2014 19:15:55 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=5029Two years ago, at WordCamp NYC, the idea for The Matt Report podcast struck me.

Certainly not to the degree that the podcast exists today, but as a small seed nonetheless. We’re almost approaching 100 episodes so it’s a great time to reflect and offer a bonus in celebration of this milestone.

So how did the idea pop into my head?

I was waiting for Andrew Nacin to take the stage and as he walked down the aisle, I heard whispers from other developers:

“Hey it’s Nacin! I’d love to show him what I’m working on, but he would probably laugh at me”

“OMG that’s him!”

If you haven’t been to a WordCamp yet, you really should. It’s a great way to talk to some really smart people and get socially involved — if you would just break out of your shell. That’s the rub. I noticed a large portion of attendees that were afraid to reach out and shake someone’s hand. Introduce themselves and share their life’s work.

That’s why we are all here, to be part of and grow a community. Not just on Twitter, but in real life. Crazy right?

So as Nacin approached the stage and as I heard some of the sheepish remarks, that’s when it hit me — I’m going to interview the great people that make up our WordPress community. I reached out to my local meetup organizer and started with him. I didn’t have a plan or a roadmap for progress — it was very much like tumbling down a mountain and just grasping at roots. Eventually, I found my legs and focused in on fine tuning the podcast and recently brought on an Executive Producer to bring this production to the next level.

I support the production of the podcast by offering a membership portal and consulting services to a select few every year. Today, we’re including a “care package” with your Annual or Intensive consulting signup.

This offer only lasts two weeks

For the next two weeks we are offering a bonus to those that signup for a Matt Report Pro Annual or Intensive membership plans.

What’s in the Care Package:

1 Year FREE hosting from the great people at SiteGround (Valid for the first 10 signups)

Jump into the Pro forums and introduce yourself to the community. (Our next Mastermind call is August 7th)

After your membership grace period, enjoy all of the benefits of Matt Report Pro care package including a free year of hosting, Modern Business Pro theme + Conductor plugin to build your next client project.

]]>https://mattreport.com/celebrating-two-years-of-the-matt-report/feed/5Try Curtis McHale’s simple change to produce a significant resulthttps://mattreport.com/curtis-mchale-interview/
https://mattreport.com/curtis-mchale-interview/#commentsThu, 24 Jul 2014 05:00:15 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4941Curtis McHale is a returning guest on the Matt Report. In this return appearance on the Matt Report, Curtis shares how and why his rule of no weeknight TV watching, reading business books, finding clients that view hiring a WordPress developer as an investment, and being candid with clients about understanding software bugs has helped double his income.

Communication is the essential factor to having a successful local or remote outsourcing relationship. If you decide you want to use a source from a place like Elance or oDesk, you need to set up a solid process to find the qualified individual.

As an experienced developer Curtis has a sweet spot for plugin documentation. A plugin with great documentation is a valuable gem. While auto-generated documentation is not enough.

Listening Options

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(Enjoy the unedited intro! )

Here’s what you can expect in the interview

(times correspond to video)

1:30 How did Curtis double his income?
6:00 Create a product from a presentation
7:30 Splitting time between business tasks vs using the overlapping technique
10:00 Building a team-virtual or in person
14:00 Outsourcing work to O-desk-putting a process in place to find good match
20:00 Point of failure when delegating
22:00 Hiring a project manager
24:00 Being a developer “in demand” and asking the right questions
26:00 Working with clients that view their website as an investment instead of an expense
31:00 Curtis’ advice when you realize the client’s project will take longer time and more money
36:00 Pay for the business tools that will save you development time
38:30 What makes a well built product that an advanced developer would purchase
41:00 What is a reasonable response time for support to advanced developer

We chatted a while back about putting on a”host swap” of sorts. I interview a guest for his show, he interviews a guest for mine. I had a great time and he really knocked it out of the park on this episode. You can also head over to watch my interview with Jason Cohen on Troy’s site.

In today’s episode we’re hearing from one of my community fave’s Japh Thomson of X-team. He shares his story about developing the WP-Stream plugin with folks like Frankie Jarrett. Sit back, relax, and get ready to listen to the Matt Report hosted by WPElevation!

Interview with Japh Thomson

Listening options

Let us know what you think!

Want to see more host swapping going on? It was very insightful to see Troy going through the paces of my process and question list. I know I had a bit of a challenge running through his framework, but in the end, the interview still came out great. Go ahead and check it out here.

]]>https://mattreport.com/host-swap-troy-dean-interviews-japh-thomson/feed/1Forget the garage — he started from a closet.https://mattreport.com/dusty-davidson-flywheel/
https://mattreport.com/dusty-davidson-flywheel/#commentsThu, 10 Jul 2014 18:20:08 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4718I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down with the founder of Flywheel.

I did my usual routine of background checks, blog post readings, and Twitter stream scanning. I knew going into the interview that he did A LOT. I was most interested in how he launched all of these “valley-like” startups from the midwest. But when I got to know Dusty’s story is the hard work he put into all of his efforts. Simple and down to earth efforts of building something great.

Ship it, talk to customers, polish it, rinse and repeat. All of this in the super competitive WordPress hosting space. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did!

Interview with Dusty Davidson

The WordPress website hosting industry is a crowded space. However, Dusty Davidson and his team are positioning Flywheel as a software company providing managed WordPress website hosting for designers.

That has been a very important approach to the companies success thus far. Make a beautiful product for people that instill the same values with their own work. WordPress is already a passionate space — appealing to designers is just icing on the cake!

Takeaway messages from Matt’s conversation with Dusty:

To validate your business idea, chat directly with the people who have expressed inbound interest in your service. Don’t avoid calling just because it will take an extended period of time.

Do the things that do not scale to understand the customer’s pain points.

Stay focused on what you do best, your customer and your product to build your business.

Large markets have room for many participants that are differentiating themselves and capturing passionate users.

Respect for your competition breeds innovation which benefits the end user.

Listening options

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Times Correspond to Video

0:30 Why another WP Managed host
5:15 How do you build a 10X better host
9:00 What was it like to get your 1st 100 clients?
11:30 How did you reach out to the 1st dozen designers?
13:30 How are you marketing to designers/developers so they will refer clients?
16:00 What is the current roadblock to your growth?
21:00 Advice to plugin developers for pricing to properly account for support?
24:00 Wish for plugin developers to do
26:00 Has Flywheel recently automated some processes? How to roll out features
28:00 Did you have a backup plan/MVP/Pivot point?
32:00 What next for Flywheel
33:30 What else do you do

Get in Touch with Dusty

Resources Mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/dusty-davidson-flywheel/feed/5Matt Report now has an Executive Producerhttps://mattreport.com/matt-report-executive-producer-lisa-snyder/
https://mattreport.com/matt-report-executive-producer-lisa-snyder/#commentsTue, 08 Jul 2014 19:35:44 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4702Note from Matt: I’d like you to give a warm welcome to Lisa Snyder, Executive Producer, for the Matt Report podcast. Lisa has been a faithful listener and fully dedicated to the Matt Report Pro community since it started. We’re both excited to do to bigger and better things for the WordPress entrepreneur community. Sit back and relax as there will be more great things to come!

When I was composing this introduction to my role as Executive Producer, I imagined I was an interview guest on the Matt Report….

Lisa B. Snyder, who are you and how did you get into WordPress?

I have been a Matt Report listener since Spring of 2013 and a Matt Report Pro Member the since inception of the community.

I started using WordPress as my primary platform for website building around the time I attended my first WordCamp Philly in 2010. While I spent most of my career building relationships with small business owners to help them with their employee benefits and health insurance programs, I left the insurance industry a few years ago to focus fully on growing into the tech industry. My business venture is called Silver Hoop Edge and I primarily collaborate with businesses owners and power their websites with WordPress.

My home office is in Central NJ. I have been a wife to Ira for almost a quarter century and a Mom to Sam (almost in college) and Jeremy (already in college).

What is main the purpose of adding an Executive Producer to the Matt Report?

I will be conducting brief pre-interviews with prospective Matt Report guests to get them comfortable with the interview process and help figure out what the takeaway lesson will be that the guest can share with the Matt Report audience. After the interview is recorded with Matt, I will create the show notes that you will find on Matt Report.com. (If you subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud- stop by the website once in a while to get the resource list from each show.)

Do you think that having an Executive Producer will change the essence or spirit of the Matt Report shows?

No, Matt will still be one having the conversations with guests that become the interviews that you listen to or watch.

What quote do you run your business by?

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. (Arthur Ashe)

Why did you say YES to taking on the role of Executive Producer of the Matt Report?

I love working with WordPress and I see working with Matt on the Matt Report as a natural extension.

I want to give back to the community and follow the example of many others that have paved the road before me. I am enriched and inspired by the steady stream of generosity and creativity that I see from active members of the WordPress local and extended community.

I want to see the Matt Report and Matt Report Pro community continue and thrive.

What question did I not ask you?

“Why do you feel the need to use your middle initial?”
A few years ago, while reading the local chamber of commerce magazine, I saw my name mentioned in an article. I thought– “How nice that the chamber of commerce is featuring me….” But, after reading more carefully, I found that another WordPress professional, Lisa A. Snyder lived and worked just a few miles from my home office. After finding Lisa A. Snyder on Twitter and meeting her over coffee; I decided that in order to avoid confusion, Lisa Snyder of Silver Hoop Edge became Lisa B. Snyder (B for Beth). Lisa A. Snyder has since moved to the west coast to run her business.

In this premier of The Startup Platform, we cover the major building blocks of launching a successful web project from bottom to top. Kristin and I take you through this fast paced boot camp of goal setting, content planning, and measuring results.

Look for more of these free sessions in the future and drop your requests in the comments!

The Startup Platform Episode 1

Highlights

We prepped listeners with the top questions and strategies to think about before even choosing your platform or writing the first word

We discussed just HOW important it is to align copy, design and development, and what comes first

Matt explained how to define your audience and how that translates to your website design and layout, as well as copy

Next, we explained how to prioritize different aspects of your website

Because there are SO many website platforms to choose from, Matt explained why you should (or shouldn’t) choose WordPress

I then dove into how to plan for and write the most important pieces of your web copy, including headlines

Matt explained why the fold is DEAD

We then wrapped up the intensive bootcamp with details on testing and iterating on your design, layout and copy

Slides

Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments. Know someone that could use the help offered in this episode? Share it!

]]>https://mattreport.com/startup-platform-episode-1/feed/5How to develop a successful product with Frankie Jarretthttps://mattreport.com/successful-product-frankie-jarrett/
https://mattreport.com/successful-product-frankie-jarrett/#commentsFri, 27 Jun 2014 12:35:00 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4596Back at WordCamp Miami, I had dinner with my new friend Topher, where we shared some great food and conversation.

In typical podcaster fashion I asked, “Who should I interview next?”

Topher said that I HAVE to talk to Frankie, lead on the WP-Stream plugin. Having just found out about the plugin and really loving the power and simplicity it delivers, I had to find out how this product was built.

Get your pen and paper ready, in today’s episode, Frankie will teach us all about building a successful product from the ground up. Enjoy!

Interview with Frankie Jarrett

Frankie Jarrett is the Head of WordPress product for X-Team, the company behind the WP-Stream plugin.

(At X-team)We are not afraid to offer the best solution for client-even when it’s not WordPress.

Applications and markets seem to be constantly expanding for X-Team’s project WP-Stream. WP-Stream is not even available for every website powered by WordPress. The plugin is free and available in the WordPress repository, but you must have PHP 5.3 running in order to use WP-Stream. Frankie describes why his team decided to create the product with requirements that are higher than what is normally needed for a WordPress installation and why you should be delighted when a plugin updates daily.

don’t be afraid if things are broken

Frankie has established Churchthemes.net, a specialty theme shop focused around his personal passion. In turn, he gives back to the community related to the market for his themes. 3 years old. Success is driven by really understanding the market. Put your heart behind your work and share your motivation.

Listening options

Watching options

Interview Contents:

(times correspond to video)
1:00 About Frankie Jarrett, Head of WordPress Product for X-Team
6:30 What was the need and how did the Stream idea move forward
7:20 Launching before Version 1.0 was “ready”
9:45 Use a daily release cycle to get regular feedback
14:30 Why should you launch a plugin using WordPress.org?
27:00 Frankie’s Entrepreneurial spark shines through his work at Churchthemes.net
33:00 Backwards compatibility-why you need PHP 5.3 to use Stream
36:00 Innovations and opportunities with WordPress and WP-Stream. Use audit trail as customer service tool.
41:30 Using GitHub for customer support

You may be familiar with the User Experience of a website or app, but what about your business? That’s what we’re focusing on today. How do clients interact with us from the pre-sale, to the mid-project, all the way down to support phase?

It might mean WordPress isn’t the answer for them. Yikes. Let’s dive into today’s show and soak up all of the great knowledge Cody has to offer.

Daniel originally started learning and using WP when he was running a martial arts academy. As his professional focus evolved he started offering internet marketing consulting services. WordPress is still Daniel’s web building platform of choice for his business ventures. Daniel was originally told that WordPress was “easy” to figure out and use by watching youtube videos. However, Daniel realized that he would need to hire professionals to build stuff more customized and complex elements for his web 40 properties.

Listen to the interview to find out the unsolved WordPress administration issue for website owners that Daniel outlines. It could be an opportunity for you as a developer to address.

Resources mentioned

]]>https://mattreport.com/segmenting-outsourcing-engaging-to-grow-your-wordpress-business/feed/0Embrace the Happy Chaos with Adam Clarkhttps://mattreport.com/embrace-happy-chaos-with-adam-clark/
https://mattreport.com/embrace-happy-chaos-with-adam-clark/#commentsTue, 03 Jun 2014 21:29:01 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4481Adam Clark’s journey to becoming the WordPress-loving freelance developer he is today took a detour. Adam started out in the field of journalism and moved into using and modifying WordPress code. Adam took a detour down the path of using Expression Engine to customize client projects. It wasn’t until after WordPress 3.0 came on the scene that he decided to check out how WordPress had changed.

Today, Adam’s primary business, BottleRocket Creative, is a development company that produces websites powered by WordPress.

Interview with Adam Clark

Listen to the audio version

One Day and Done

I can’t really think of anything that I wouldn’t do with WordPress at this point?

Adam shares his recent experience experimenting and fine tuning WPTheory, his recently launched productized service business. Adam has focused WPTheory around designing smaller projects with shorter project turnarounds. Adam thinks WPTheory will work well for WordPress website redesigns and for clients with budgets around $1000. Adam acknowledged the need to iron out a few wrinkles to make the pre-project intake process more streamlined.

Building themes for churches

In the past, Adam had not been involved with other developers in the WordPress community and has not (YET) attended a WordCamp. However, he recently started to make connections to other WordPress developers via the Genesis platform community. His church focused themes will be created as Genesis child themes.

Creating a show even his wife would listen to.

In December 2012, Adam was feeling frustrated and wanted to launch SOMETHING. He decided to give himself a self-imposed deadline by starting to book guests for podcast interviews—even before creating a website or designing a logo for his new venture. The current format of the podcasting venture, on Goodstuff.fm, was started with several partners in 2014.

Here’s a list of a few spaces where you can connect with others in the WordPress Community

]]>https://mattreport.com/embrace-happy-chaos-with-adam-clark/feed/0What about Bob Dunn?https://mattreport.com/bob-dunn/
https://mattreport.com/bob-dunn/#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 15:37:19 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4421Do you have to train your clients on using WordPress after a site launch?

In today’s episode I get to sit down with someone I have a ton of respect for, Bob Dunn. Bob runs a site called BobWP.com where he educates newbie WordPress users on using themes, plugins, and general blogging practices.

As advanced users, sometimes training can be daunting for us. Why don’t they get it? This is so easy!

Bob preaches about patience as a virtue and how that resonates with his clients. This creates a customer base that really fall in love with Bob and his process, which keeps the referral engine going.

Interview with Bob Dunn of BobWP.com

Upfront and personal

In a world of passive income and six-figure theme sales, Bob has a lot to teach us about creating personal relationships with our customers.

It’s not much different than building an audience and that’s what I love about what he has going on. He openly admits that he operates under a different “style.” A style that is more hands on, longer duration tutorials, and thorough discovery of client needs. This attracts a demographic of non-technical WP users which commonly need a recurring amount of help. At the end of the day, he’s building up a loyal following of repeat customers that have no trouble referring him to others.

Finding focus

Thousands of themes and thousands of plugins.

Bob has set a core focus on producing tutorials for Genesis and WooThemes. While he get’s a lot of requests to cover other themes and plugins, he’s realized that setting a vertical early on is a must. This opens up the stage for digging into the “data” of WP products. Common questions and repeat frustrations can be a tremendous asset to product developers.

I think this is where Bob and many of us training users can find leverage with our businesses.

What are your WP training tips?

I’d like you to share your stories and tips for training the clients you work with. Let us know in the comments below!

]]>https://mattreport.com/bob-dunn/feed/3The 6 P’s to Building an Engaged Audiencehttps://mattreport.com/building-an-audience/
https://mattreport.com/building-an-audience/#commentsTue, 06 May 2014 23:56:39 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4331Building an audience is quickly becoming the #1 way to market yourself or your services.

When I hear developers say, “I stopped selling xyz product because I couldn’t market it.” I wonder if they ever gave themselves a chance to cultivate an engaged audience first. Lot’s of them feel “weird” about marketing and they shouldn’t.

I don’t want to be THAT gal hocking my wares. I don’t want to be THAT guy plugging my services.

Why not? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

If you don’t ask, you will never get the sale.

That feeling of regret

I want you to think back to your days in middle school.

Remember when you were at the school dance and you wanted to dance with that special someone?

You’ve passed notes to her back and forth in math class and always sought to land a seat next to her at lunch time. You know she’s the one for you. There you are, in the school gymnasium, with the lights turned down, while everyone get’s their two-step on. You’re wearing a fresh pair of Levi’s and rocking clean cut from the barber shop.

Regret sets in while you head back home in the back seat of your parents car.

Don’t make that mistake again.

The 6 P’s and your future audience

I hope you can use these bullet points as the framework to your new marketing efforts. There’s no doubt about it, you have to put in the work.

The difference here is, the work is whatever you want it to be.

I like audience marketing because it’s creative, engaging and brings in an interesting twist to competition. I’m not ranking for keywords or battling PPC. I’m talking, hopefully you’re listening, and we’re making a connection.

Now it’s your turn.

Personality

This is what keeps an audience coming back. It’s why they are attracted to you in the first place.

The #1 rule is to not force yourself to be other than who you are. I’ll be honest, in my first few episodes of the Matt Report, I was trying to be like another podcast host I followed. I even tried doing my intros just like him and I knew I was forcing it each and every time. Stay far away from that.

It’s also going to lead to a lot less stress.

If you let it flow naturally, it’s going to be like a normal conversation. You’re comfortable with the way you already speak or present your ideas — why change it now? That’s also going to attract people just like you and that’s what you want.

In marketing we talk about engagement factors. An audience of 10 that talk to you (read: engage) are much more valuable than 1,000 who say nothing (read: not engaged). There’s a lot of value in an audience and we can talk about that after.

Podcasting

Web shows.

Web TV.

Talk show host.

Podcasting is, for the mean time, the best way to start cultivating your audience. It’s intimate, portable, and can be highly interactive.

But for the love of God, do something other than 45 minute interviews.

Even I get burned out from doing the industry standard which is why I do unique shows like The Startup Challenge and PressThis. Give your audience something else to tune into, something different.

I’ve laid out a few resources on how to start a podcast and the challenges of podcasting in the WordPress world. The technology is going to make it easier, but the amount of content being published will make it harder for you to bubble to the top.

Start now.

Product

Product? What?

That’s right, you have to think of your efforts for building an audience akin to product development.

Know that you need to care for it,market it, and pivot with it.

You start out thinking it’s going to appeal to a certain crowd and before you know it, you’re fielding questions on a whole different topic. Just like when you launched your first plugin or started your services company — you set out to do one thing and unearthed a new vertical. Be prepared.

Something else that products require is scale. The more you sell, the more support you need. The more revenue, the more developers you need to hire and reinvest back into production. Your product needs a marketing team and a sales team too.

Don’t worry, this takes time, but I urge you to have some foresight in the matter. The more content you put out, the more inbound requests to do stuff is going to happen. I know, that’s a good problem, but a problem you need to be ready for.

Persistence

Father time is our greatest enemy.

Podcasting isn’t your only avenue for building an audience. It could be blogging, a private newsletter, a community forum or group, or video series of screencasts. But each of these take time. A lot of time, in fact.

You start out excited and eager to publish your content. Then you get busy and you put it off for a week — then 2 — and so on.

They say once you hit 10 episodes, you will get to 25 and from 25 to 50, and from that point on you should be in the groove. Godspeed.

But why do I say persistence and not consistency? Because you’re going to make excuses in the beginning. Combating time and your priorities, day in and day out. You need to stay the course, this stuff requires you put in the work.

Planning

Remember when I said there’s a lot of value in building an audience?

I didn’t mean just for selling a product or marketing your services. You can do all sorts of things with an audience if you take a moment to plan this out.

Selling, without selling – Attention developers: Start with a series of how-to. How-to code, pick a framework, or use Github. If you have a fear of selling, just draw attention to what you’re good at and folks will inherently find the products you offer. Content marketing 101.

Product development and feedback – Probably the most underrated out of the bunch, but great for early product development. Start by filming a short introduction to your product and it’s future features. Perhaps you can being your potential customer on a journey as you roll out your first few phases. Capturing feedback now, well before you have to start beating the streets.

Build a bigger network – Above all, you start meeting new people you otherwise wouldn’t have from within your audience. They introduce you to others and before you know it, you’ve grown your network. Everyone wins when this happens.

So what’s your plan and how are you going to execute on it?

Passion

I should only give this a “half” of a point because everyone gives this advice, but I still think it’s worth reminding you about.

You will quickly become aware if you have the passion for all of this or not. There’s a meme within my Twitter friends called #medeirosing. If you follow me, you may have seen it once or twice.

I have a passion for networking, promotion, and occasionally saying things before thinking. Ready, fire, aim vs. Ready, aim, fire.

The internet is a busy place. We’re all busy — we’re all tuned in to our various “channels.” If you don’t have the gumption or #medeirosing to step it up and make yourself known, how will you ever be found?

]]>https://mattreport.com/building-an-audience/feed/0How to find determination when the chips are downhttps://mattreport.com/how-to-find-determination/
https://mattreport.com/how-to-find-determination/#commentsTue, 29 Apr 2014 21:12:21 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4284You might refer to it as crushing it or pushing through or even the grind.

Determination is often overlooked in the entrepreneur’s journey. Some will fold when faced with the slightest friction of startup life. Others will give up when they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Dre Armeda, co-founder of Sucuri, joins us to talk about determination and preparation when starting your first business. He’s also half of the talent over at the DradCast a popular WordPress podcast.

Dre Armeda of Sucuri security services

A story of determination and perseverance

Many of you might know Dre form his podcast, but you might not know the genesis of his startup Sucuri.

A bootstrapped security company that helps protect WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla sites from being hacked. I actually subscribe to their service for this site and a few of my client websites — I’d suggest taking a look at their offerings if you’re in need.

Like many of us in the early days, Dre and his team were faced with making the decision of going all in on the company. Even with full-time jobs, decisions had to be made to quit and focus on growing the business. Tune in to find out what that was like and how they went through the steps to get there.

Carrie brings us through some amazing stories, from bootstrapping a greeting card service to working at StarBucks and how both experiences impacted her career. If you’re just starting out or working a day to day that you’re trying to get out of, this episode is for you!

Carrie Dils Genesis Developer

Listen to the audio

Lessons from GiggleSnort

I love stories about people beating the street to earn a living.

I’m a solid believer in learning the “cold call” before launching yourself into the entrepreneurial journey. Carrie ran a greeting card company called GiggleSnort that quickly exposed her to the hard lessons of small business. Failure is great. You learn from it, get thicker skin, and find new opportunities.

Fail fast, if you can.

Finding Genesis

Once Carrie found StudioPress & Genesis there was no looking back.

She has leveraged the product to build custom solutions for her clients, while continuing to elevate her expertise over the years. You can find her as one of the recommended Genesis developers and recently launched two commercial themes. Utility can be found in her store and Winning Agent over at StudioPress.

Aside from all of the great WordPress code Carrie develops, she’s also an awesome person. I’ve been a fan for quite a while and wish her the best of luck in her business.

Matt Report Pro

It just so happens that Carrie and Tom McFarlin taught a course about starting and running a WordPress theme business in the Pro forum of the site. Become a member and get access to that and a lot more!

]]>https://mattreport.com/carrie-dils-greeting-cards-wordpress/feed/2Off the cuff with Marcus Couchhttps://mattreport.com/marcus-couch/
https://mattreport.com/marcus-couch/#commentsWed, 09 Apr 2014 00:38:24 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4103I’ve had the chance to talk to some really smart and down to earth people lately.

Today’s guest, Marcus Couch of WordPress podcasting fame (though don’t say that around him), joins us to chat about the ups and downs of running your own business. From landing large national client’s with hundreds of websites, to losing ten’s of thousands of dollars betting on the wrong partner.

This episode is about as real as it gets, narrated by a guy who knows his stuff. Enjoy!

Interview with Marcus Couch

Listen to the audio version

I’m just a member of the community. ~ Marcus Couch

I wanted to open up with that quote, as it paints the picture really well about our friend Marcus.

I joked at the top of the show (as we WordPress podcasters do) and mentioned that he was the Simon Cowell of WordPress podcasting. Marcus parried and stated he was just a member of the community — not a celebrity.

He’s doing things for the love of the software and for the love of the job. It inspires him, allows him to create and he can do all this while making a living. I relate to this very well , as I’m sure you do too.

So many of us get caught up in the money and the “fame” of a startup that we burn out or find ourselves not loving what it is we do. Curtis McHale recently wrote a post about this that you should read.

Hard lesson learned

There’s a point in the episode that things get real. Really real.

This is another lesson I sorely relate to — as I fear some of you have learned as well. I couldn’t write about it on this post to do it justice, so you’ll just have to listen. I can say, pick the right partners and hire the right people for the job — it could cost you more than you think.

]]>https://mattreport.com/marcus-couch/feed/0WP Valet: Leveraging customer datahttps://mattreport.com/wp-valet-leveraging-customer-data/
https://mattreport.com/wp-valet-leveraging-customer-data/#commentsFri, 28 Mar 2014 18:37:28 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4065There’s a great resource that so many of us overlook.

It starts with the time you spend invoicing, speaking on the phone and training clients. It’s the time it takes to update a plugin starting from the first click to login. There’s top pages, posts and podcasts that your audience consumes on a monthly basis. There’s the monthly recurring revenue and new product sales numbers during a launch.

Have you guessed it yet? It’s data.

We have all of this data right at our fingertips and we’re still unsure how to price or estimate hours. Mason James of WP Valet joins us to talk about that and more in today’s episode.

Sit back, relax and get your stopwatches ready for your next client project!

Interview with Mason James

Filling a gap

Finding customers, better yet, finding the right customer is no easy task.

I think that a lot of us are afraid of the sale. We’re so afraid of the possible “No!” we’re going to hear, that we don’t prove our value well enough. We’re not telling the right story from the onset.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say we don’t give ourselves enough credit. I think that before our businesses get rocking, we’re a bit timid to approach someone and attempt the sale. We’re more concerned that they will say no, than getting them to understand the value we bring to the table.

Mason approaches this by proving the value before the sale happens. In fact, he’s really focused on clients that want a relationship and not just a 2 month engagement.

Educating a customer on the process, people involved, and support level of your team should begin to raise the price in their mind. Remember, this isn’t just to raise prices for the fun fact of raising prices. This is because you value your time and employ a team of professionals dedicated to the project’s outcome.

You must truly believe that you are offering a service that no one else is. The next challenge is to actually deliver on your promise. Fill the gap no one else is.

Audio

Looks like I had another fault at the mic on this one, which was recorded right after the previous episode.

I hope you’re liking the Soundcloud embeds. Folks are starting to follow me on there which is great. I use Soundcloud when I’m out running and at the gym — I really love the app. You can also download the mp3 from the embed above if you need to.

I was able to buy a Soundcloud Pro account thanks to folks who support me by signing up for Matt Report Pro. THANK YOU!

]]>https://mattreport.com/wp-valet-leveraging-customer-data/feed/4James Dalman is disrupting web design (again)https://mattreport.com/james-dalman-happy-joe/
https://mattreport.com/james-dalman-happy-joe/#commentsTue, 25 Mar 2014 15:13:32 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4053One day I’ll write a book about how the experience of selling cars should be a precursor to becoming an entrepreneur.

In fact, I’ve put some thoughts together on that topic before. There’s no better training than working with cold calls, negotiations and rejection that the car lot affords you. After a few years, you just “get it.”

In this conversation we’ll cover his journey as a freelancer, to working at WebDesign.com with Cory Miller and his latest launch HappyJoe.co. Here’s a service poised to disrupt recruiting and education of US Veterans looking for a career in web design/development.

James Dalman of HappyJoe.co

What matters at the end of the day

James reminds us to gut check our work at the end of the day. No matter how much or how little you charged, do you feel happy with your work? Did you deliver with integrity? Are your clients happy?

So often we overlook this simple formula in place of pricing strategies and negotiation concepts for better returns. If you’re happy with the work you did and your client is high fiving you — you done good.

Real good.

Forming a strong bond and trust with your client will pay off in the long run. It might not come in the form of immediate dollars, but referrals or strong positive reviews. Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing.

Disrupting the freelancing industry

We rely on the generous contributions of corporations and individuals to offset the costs of training and mentoring veterans who make it through a tough and strict application process. Veterans who are accepted into our program are provided with these resources for free.

Remember when I said James gets it?

His latest business HappyJoe.co is pairing up veterans with web tech mentoring and providing services for businesses. Oh, and it’s non-profit.

In this interview you will learn how he ended up during his long journey in the web design space. This new form of mentorship and collaboration is sure to be a massive success and I wish him all the best.

]]>https://mattreport.com/james-dalman-happy-joe/feed/0Alex King: Invest in team building and creating valuehttps://mattreport.com/alex-king-crowd-favorite-team-building/
https://mattreport.com/alex-king-crowd-favorite-team-building/#commentsWed, 19 Mar 2014 20:28:51 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4015I have the honor of sitting down with legacy WordPress entrepreneur Alex King of Crowd Favorite in today’s episode.

Rounding off my release of big name WordPress agency founders, Alex paints the portrait of his 10+ year WordPress career. We cover the recent acquisition from VeloMedia to learning the hard lessons of building a team.

Many successful founders find themselves faced with new challenges that were not listed on the roadmap to success they were carrying. Mr. King is no different and we’ll hear how he navigated that terrain.

Alex King of Crowd Favorite

Do interesting stuff, create value, and success will happen

Here’s what I have never heard from a successful entrepreneur:

“I looked at what the other guy was doing and copied them.”

Now, that’s not so say you can’t look at the competition and do it better - but that’s a different discussion. Enter in Alex King who has been working with WordPress before it was even WordPress. Building plugins and products based on his own desires and then finding a customer fit secondary.

If you’re naturally interested in building solutions that are creating value for you, chances are it’s solving this need for someone else in the world. So while you might find it advantageous to scour CodeCanyon and pick the top seller, remember that’s a short game maneuver.

Investing in a team

There’s a strong undercurrent of the right team and culture across many of the guests I sit down with.

Founders like Jake, Brad, and Shane all echo the importance of investing in the employee (read: team) before anything else. Arguably this is the biggest challenge of a small startup to century old businesses.

Here’s the thing: It’s going to change over time.

As you evolve, as your company evolves, so will the culture and the people. You need to be aware of this change and embrace it when the time comes.

I want you to really listen to the tone of Alex’s voice and you can hear that there are hard lessons learned. Rightfully so. If there was a starter guide to all of this, the whole game would be quite boring wouldn’t it?

Apologies on the recording

Looks like I messed up the audio and recorded with my webcam and not my Rode podcaster. Sometimes the USB cable pulls out when I move the boom. I hope you do make it all the way through because it was a great one.

Matt Report Pro

If you’re looking to join a community of awesome WordPress entrepreneurs like yourself — checkout MattReport.com/join and become a member!

]]>https://mattreport.com/alex-king-crowd-favorite-team-building/feed/0Jake Goldman on building a WordPress agencyhttps://mattreport.com/jake-goldman-building-wordpress-agency/
https://mattreport.com/jake-goldman-building-wordpress-agency/#commentsWed, 19 Mar 2014 01:29:15 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=4006In today’s episode I finally make it around to inviting my good friend Jake Goldman on to the show. If you don’t know Jake, he’s running one of the largest WordPress agencies on the planet.

If you’re looking to scale your own shop, we talk about some very important steps starting with recruiting the right people to offering more than just web development.

Jake Goldman founder of 10up.com

What’s going on at 10up?

You might recall I recently did an e-mail interview with Jake covering seoslides.

More recently he and his team launched a new product called PushUp a plugin that will enable you to push notifications to a reader’s Mavericks desktop. In fact, if you’re in Safari now, you should have been prompted to subscribe to my site.

However, today’s episode will focus more on 10up the agency, as Jake promises to return to chat about the product side of things at a later date.

Growing an agency

One of the most important elements to a successful agency are the projects and accounts they work on, however, this should not overshadow the importance of hiring great people.

Jake shares his thoughts and process on hiring great WordPress developers and embedding them into the 10up culture.

Another important note, which I learned early on as well, do not stop at just web development.

Sure it’s going to depend on your goals and resources, but if you’re just pumping out projects and not building multiple revenue streams of support and strategy — you might find it difficult to grow.

Jake admits that early on, you have to take what you can get to pay the bills. I agree with this, so long as you know that you have a preferred client in mind. Client’s that want to sign support contracts or retainers because they have a need to scale and they want you to be a part of it.

Let’s hear from you

What were your thoughts on the interview?

I’m going to have Jake back to talk about his products and I’d love to gather some listener questions now. Post them in the comments below.

One of the biggest culprits weighing us down are the featured images we use to showcase our content. It’s important to pick a great photo that lures the reader in. Great photos sometimes come with a cost in bytes or Megabytes in today’s example.

Normally I reserve Friday Edition lessons (great for us weekend WordPress warriors) to the Pro members, but it’s on the house today.

How to optimize your blog images

Tools and steps to decrease the page load

Before the elite Gods of speed optimization tell me differently — I don’t do this every day.

I can tell you that I’ve worked with WordPress clients that don’t know any better than to upload a raw image directly from their corporate camera.

If you have clients like this or you’re starting out yourself, this is a great tutorial for streamlining your photos for the web.

In this example I take a 4MB+ photo, optimize the file locally, and then serve it up using the WordPress JetPack Photon CDN. There are other great examples of CDN’s which you can find from Jean’s article comparing them.

So while we can tune and tweak the server for Google’s desire — it’s equally important to use the right photo from the start.

Image editing tools

Pixelmator – A great Photoshop alternative for resizing and degrading the quality of the photo.

I was able to shrink the size of this file, from it’s original size to 4.9MB to ~55KB with the process shown in the video. Good news for you, it’s very simple.

Load up the image in Pixelmator (or your photo editing software)

REsize to the desired size. I try and pick the exact size of my WordPress theme’s featured image. In my case, it’s 732px.

When exporting, I’ll degrade the quality of the jpg to what I can tolerate. In this case 50% of the original quality.

Save and serve with a side of speedy goodness!

WordPress plugins I use

JetPack Photon as a CDN – Photon does a great job of serving up the images as a CDN. You can see from my examples in the video or below.

WP Smush.it – Though I don’t specifically use it in this video, I mention it because it is useful for running through your media gallery.

Performance testing tools

WebPagetest.org – one of the first tools I’ve started using for measuring performance.

GTmetrix – another useful tool for measuring the performance and comparing your site to others.

Putting it all together

Please note: there are a lot of variables to speed tests, load times, images etc. I realize this, but I’m solving probably 90% of the bloat that clients and beginners struggle with.

In today’s lesson I upload the full size 3500px wide image first.Then spend some time running through the tools and uploading to a new blog post. From there, I install JetPack and enable photon and run the tests against a non-optimized image and then to the optimized images. Your results may vary.

Full-size image speeds – 8.869 seconds

Full-size image w/ JetPack Photon – 1.367 seconds

Optimized image w/ JetPack Photon – 1.166 seconds

Conclusion

Should you be using a CDN? Absolutely.

Since Photon is so accessible and it just works — give it a go. One thing TO notice is the fact that enabling JetPack + Photon added 10 more requests to our speed tests. (note: from 13 to 23)

Might not be a big deal on smaller sites, but could certainly have some scaling effects on larger, more competitive sites. A majority of the work can and should be done locally before uploading the image.

The best thing you can do is to use exact size featured photos if your theme uses the featured images feature. Make sense? Start making your pages fly today!

What are your tips for optimizing page load? Want more lessons like this delivered every Friday? Join Matt Report Pro!

]]>https://mattreport.com/optimize-blog-images/feed/9Automattic and the VIP Platform with Paul Maioranahttps://mattreport.com/automattic-vip-platform-paul-maiorana/
https://mattreport.com/automattic-vip-platform-paul-maiorana/#commentsWed, 12 Mar 2014 15:21:57 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3951There is managed WordPress hosting and then there is the VIP platform.

Ok, so maybe you don’t make the leap THAT fast, but if you’re a Fortune 50 looking for a strong SLA tied closely to Automattic, you might choose VIP.

Paul Maiorana, VP of Platform Services, joins us to talk about what it’s like to work at Automattic and wrangle the large Fortune clients. We’ll discover some of the future vision of WordPress and what enterprise clients expect from an agency and what VIP expects from a developer.

I had a great time in this interview and I hope you enjoy it!

Interview with Paul Maiorana

Listening to a client

I was really interested to learn how Paul’s sales team interact with larger clients.

It came down to one simple rule that even smaller agencies struggle with — listening. Mark Suster refers to it as The Danger of Crocodile Sales. Like a croc, you might have a big mouth and little ears. Talking the talk, spitting out lingo and simply not listening.

If you’re looking for more clients, you need to listen to their pain points and needs before you begin.

More money more problems?

As you scale up these fundamental lessons carry over to larger clients.

You’re still waiting for project contacts to sign off on changes and you’re still waiting for everyone to be “in the same room.” Just because you’re charging more doesn’t mean you will be changing your overall process. In fact, it will be your unique process that will get you through the door.

That’s not to say the larger account doesn’t come with it’s red tape. Listen to CC Chapman talk about that and what he forgot to do before landing a big client.

]]>https://mattreport.com/automattic-vip-platform-paul-maiorana/feed/5Ethan Marcotte: Responsive design with a side of WordPresshttps://mattreport.com/ethan-marcotte-responsive-design-with-a-side-of-wordpress/
https://mattreport.com/ethan-marcotte-responsive-design-with-a-side-of-wordpress/#commentsFri, 07 Mar 2014 19:53:31 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3907It’s not often one has the chance to share a stage with guru of responsive designEthan Marcotte, as I did during WordCamp Boston 2013.

Ok, so it wasn’t a stage, it was a podium. And we didn’t share it, I just came on after him — but I digress.

In this episode of Matt Report, our animated GIF hero and I chat about the fundamentals of usability and how responsive solves a lot more than just pretty browser snapping fun. Ethan isn’t a die-hard WordPress user either and he sheds some of his perspective on how WordPress could improve in some key areas.

Hands down a great guy to talk to with a fresh perspective on our digital world. Enjoy!

Interview with Ethan Marcotte

With a strong process and understanding

There are those that simply do work and those where the work is part of their fabric.

Ethan is certainly the latter.

Take responsive web design for instance. You might be selling brochureware sites that require the design to load “safely” on an iMac, tablet, and a cell phone. That’s great, it’s what the client wants. Everyone is happy and it’s off to the next web project.

What about if that same technology could save terabytes of data across a wireless network for developing countries? Now we’re talking about a usability and experience that’s slightly different than how you stack your grid of homepage photos.

These are the challenges that inspire Ethan on a daily basis and we’re going to chat all about it.

WordPress

Believe it it or not, he hasn’t touched WordPress in a while — or perhaps now since we originally recorded this — so his fresh perspective on our beloved platform shouldn’t be missed!

We’re also going to be giving you advice on landing that next big client and how the conversation in the room might be shockingly similar to what you’re already experiencing.

]]>https://mattreport.com/ethan-marcotte-responsive-design-with-a-side-of-wordpress/feed/1Garrett Moon of Todaymade & CoSchedulehttps://mattreport.com/garrett-moon-todaymade-coschedule/
https://mattreport.com/garrett-moon-todaymade-coschedule/#commentsFri, 28 Feb 2014 15:19:41 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3833Are you afraid to start because you’re not in San Francisco, New York, or Austin?

What if I told you that today’s guest is doing just fine out in North Dakota?

Garrett Moon is co-foudner of Todaymade a software company that launched CoSchedule a few months back. And by a few months I mean October/November of last year — yes this interview is a bit late.

None the less it is jam packed with great advice from this passionate and very talented founder. We’re going to cover a wide range of startup challenges like launching outside of a major metro market all the way to negotiating client services contracts.

Launching a startup outside of a major market

Want to hear that Pro segment at the end or join a mastermind community of WordPress folks like you? Don’t forget to use the promo code and join today!

In today’s startup world

Considering I run a distributed shop in today’s startup world, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that a talented team can find success no matter where they are.

Today’s guest shares what it’s like to launch a new product alongside a client services business and all the juicy details in between. One thing that really sticks out is building a product that solves your own need first.

Sounds so cliche, but it’s a great way to test and validate a new idea. At the end of the day, at least you can still use it for your business and that’s how Garrett and his team launched CoSchedule.

An alternative to WordPress

Something else that might come as a surprise — Todaymade has their own CMS.

Gasp! You’re not using WordPress?!

Some of the projects they launch do not require the overhead or standard features of a traditional WordPress install. Though they often integrate the blogging platform with their content management system it’s not always the perfect fit. We’ll discuss what that’s like when negotiating with customers.

This interview is a bit late

We recorded this back in November when I was first outlining the foundation of Matt Report Pro and embarrassingly I’m just airing it now. I do apologize to Garrett and his team, but this is still a great episode for all to enjoy!

Crappy ads and “consultants” that promise WhatsApp money in a weekend’s worth of SEO and retargeting work. “Don’t worry, we’ve been doing this for 6 months and our e-book will make you richer than Mark Zuckerberg after his exit from Facebook. Just give us your e-mail!” Really? Stop it already.

Take a look at this Facebook ad that I just snapped:

There’s a ton of failure here so let’s start from the top:

“24 hour SEO ranking” Are people still falling for this?

$12k annual in 5 days work. Great I just need to work for a month and I’ll have a comfortable $48k job. Where do I signup?

Offensive photo with the promise of INSANE BACKLINKS. How did this get approved by Facebook? Oh I know, because it’s revenue. As a stock holder I want revenue, but not at the cost of human decency.

Now I see unbouncepages.com as the URL. They are the brand of the product creating these landing pages.

Did I mention that photo?

Your product hurts your brand

So if you’re like me or a majority of us trained to skip ads in the feed you will just scan thorough it.

Over time and through continued impressions I might begin to think Unbounce is actually promoting these ads for their own product. Facebook is also cutting off the slug of the URL and keeping just the root domain which doesn’t help brand impression in this example.

But it’s not Unbounce — it’s their customer using the product.

Even if you do know it’s not the app at fault, you might start to relate spammy ads with their service. I know you can’t blame Ford for being the getaway car in a bank robbery, but you get the idea.

Should we censor our customers or remove branding from our product?

I don’t have an answer to this but it’s something that is on my mind.

When we see our free WordPress themes being used as porn, spam or hate speech sites there’s not much we can do about it. We cringe and see our slug at the bottom but we don’t have any real recourse available. On one hand we need to be in WordPress.org repository to gain exposure and on the other hand it leaves our brand vulnerable to bad publicity.

I’m sure Unbounce sees it’s fair share of the above and I can’t fault them for not being able to put a stop to things like this. If you’re a legal type, you might glance at their TOS to see if there’s anything binding. In the end, the only advice I have for fellow product companies is to keep an eye on it.

Right now the benefit and revenue from good customers onboarding via our free themes is greater than the harm of our brand on a rogue site. At some point it might make sense to remove the slug but for now it’s something we will monitor.

What do you think?

]]>https://mattreport.com/your-customer-is-ruining-your-brand/feed/4On Matt Report Pro and being scared to launchhttps://mattreport.com/scared-to-launch-matt-report-pro/
https://mattreport.com/scared-to-launch-matt-report-pro/#commentsFri, 21 Feb 2014 19:40:27 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3766If you follow me closely you know I’m embarking on a new journey. A real step up to the plate, face the music, look at myself in the mirror kind of journey.

Launches are scary and unnerving, but don’t worry, I’ll bring you along for the ride.

2013 was very exciting for my personal brand and for the company I started five years ago with my father. Lots of traction in the community, products built and new clients served. Let’s keep the ball rolling right?

Over the last 2 weeks I quietly rolled out Matt Report Pro. It started with a new homepage and an early signup form. Last week I contacted the early signups to offer them a special signup promotion and for folks that I’ve coached, they received a free year membership.

A big THANK YOU to everyone that has joined thus far.

Earlier this week, I talked about the Pro version during the intro of my latest podcast and offered up a bit of a special promo code there as well. Then there was a quick blurb at the bottom of the post as well– no hype, no massive Twitter announcement. Slow and steady is going to win this race for me. (I hope.)

Here’s what I want to talk about in this post:

Why the Matt Report Pro

The challenges of transparency

Free versus Paid

Providing true value

Connecting with an audience

Let’s get to it.

Transparency and #medeirosing

How do you define transparency in today’s online communication?

Is it the social graph?

Is it what you write in a blog?

What you Tweet?

Maybe the better question is, do you trust these people being “transparent?” Let me start with this: I’m just like you.

You being the person trying to start a business. You being the person trying to find your way. You being the person trying to level up.

“But Matt, you have a services company, a theme company AND a dev shop. You must be rich.”

Incorrect.

Like you, I’m trying to level up our projects and our bottom line. The product business is great, but requires lots of R&D and marketing efforts. Client services constantly introduces new challenges. It’s a constant balancing act of building new revenue streams and stabilizing the existing ones.

So when the 2% of dev shops are turning down clients left and right — and Envato sensationalizes six-figure theme shops (I’m guilty of this too), know that I’m out there hitting the pavement to learn how these organizations get there so the both of us can benefit.

Because like you, I need to eat too. I need to support and grow a team. I need to re-invest into my company and more importantly, my community.

That’s who I am. I’m you. I’m on a mission. I’m #medeirosing

Why are you telling me this?

I see the term “WordPress celebrity” thrown around and it bothers me.

Take WordCamps for instance. When I attend, I’m there to connect with people. It’s not about falling into a click or hanging out at the cool kids table. I want to meet you and help you in some way.

I enjoy meeting new people, connecting them with others and providing value. That’s the genesis of MR.

We forget that people fresh into WordPress, freelancing and networking are overwhelmed by finding their way. I was lost in the beginning and bridging that gap is what I want to do.

Why Matt Report Pro?

To offer more value for folks trying to get a WordPress business off the ground and help them achieve their goals.

I can’t do this without making it a healthy and profitable business. Why? It takes an immense amount of time to create content, schedule interviews and promote every week. Content that I know can save people countless hours and increase revenue by the tens of thousands.

A Pro version is going to take a whole new level of dedication on my part. I won’t be able to do all the editing, scheduling and show notes — stuff that takes up a bulk of the time — while running a company. Enter in the need for hiring and contracting out specific processes of the show.

The more I can offload the “dirty work” the more I can focus on solving issues for the audience and increasing the value of content.

Monetary goal

Produce $40k a year in revenue from memberships, featured content (startup challenge etc), consulting and innovative ways of sponsorship.

Why $40k?

To reinvest back into the show. To hire a producer. To travel to WordCamps and meet with new people that I can help. I don’t know about you, but anytime I hop on a plane to a WC I’m looking at 1 – 3k in expenses. Until I’m rolling on up dubs like a 10up or WDS, I’ll need to hustle.

Saying no to ads

When I thought about the monetization efforts of MR, the most obvious was placing advertisements in the show.

I talked with a few major sponsors. Some that would put me on the fast track to my $4ok goal. Like, 50% to my goal if they were the only sponsor. Amazing, I’m half way there.

The issue was I didn’t feel comfortable. It didn’t feel genuine and it didn’t provide enough value to my audience.

Let me put myself in your shoes: Did I want you to hear the same ad 3 – 5 times a month? No.

Saying yes to ads

Unique content like The Startup Challenge will still have sponsors. Because this type of show only comes out every ~45 days, it’s not something you’re going to become numb to. It also presents a unique opportunity for my fellow WP startups to reach my audience in an innovative context.

Extend sleeve and place heart

The internet is a funny place.

When I announced that there would be a paid version, I received a grab bag of interesting messages. Some folks were happy to join and elated to join a community they could benefit from. Others were outraged as if I had already charged their credit cards without even asking.

I didn’t. You signed up to be notified. I notified you. I digress.

So, lesson #1 on launching a business and waiving the proverbial heart on your sleeve flag:

Not everyone will become a customer. Folks won’t be as excited as you for the launch. You can’t expect everyone to have discretionary funds to buy your product or service.

Lesson #2:

That does not mean you hold back. You still give it your all. You still search to provide a high level of value and return for your customer.

All of that said, how is the revenue looking so far?

First two months of Matt Report revenue

First two months? You just said it was announced 2 weeks ago?!

That’s right. I’m roughly 47 days behind schedule and cutting into my annual goals. If I launched on time in January, I’d be a lot further along than I am now. Stick to your goals please.

$100 in sales (MR Pro)

$500 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MR Pro) (This will not be realized until next month)

$200 in consultation

As I continue to promote Pro and add new features, I’ll keep you up to date on the income reports. For those of you that joined, I can’t thank you enough for supporting me. I promise to work hard to deliver the results you’re expecting.

ProCasts for February

These 3 gents join us to talk about raising rates, scaling your business and finding new clients.

ProCasts are monthly lessons lead by some amazing WordPress entrepreneurs and freelancers. They will join us to give detailed presentations or discussions on particular topics that can help you level up.

What else is going on in Matt Report Pro?

A private community for Matt Report listeners

A place to learn how to improve your WordPress business

Monthly Mastermind calls

Monthly training sessions

Direct access to my guests

Member only content from each interview

Private forum to interact with other members and Matt

If this sounds interesting to you, consider joining. If you have questions, ask me.

Looking for Matt Report Pro alternatives?

Providing an insane amount value is the only growth hack I know.

Can’t afford MR Pro but still want awesome content from other entrepreneurs? No problem, my iTunes feed is still free.

Want to join a community hyper-focused on WordPress entrepreneurship but can’t spend the monthly nut? That’s why I started the Google+ community with over 350 members. Free.

Need a direct line for advice or someone to bounce ideas off of without having to go Pro? No worries, WPMentor.org is for you.

No extra cash to for me to do a direct consultation? Apply to my startup challenge and get 3x the advice.

The bottom line is, for the last year I’ve built a bunch of free valuable channels to leverage and going Pro is the 20% that comes with a price tag.

If you’re interested in supporting Matt Report and learning how to improve your WordPress business for a touch more than your average managed hosting account considering joining.

Thanks to everyone for supporting me over the last year. Let’s crush it in 2014.

]]>https://mattreport.com/scared-to-launch-matt-report-pro/feed/9Embrace the suck of your WordPress businesshttps://mattreport.com/embrace-suck-wordpress-business/
https://mattreport.com/embrace-suck-wordpress-business/#commentsMon, 17 Feb 2014 16:41:42 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3695Some of the best conversations I’ve had with WordPress entrepreneurs are those coming from a military background.

Embrace the suck is a phrase that today’s guest Nathan Hangen introduced me to as we talked about his time serving and his journey of building Ignition Deck.

There’s a lot to learn in this episode so I want you to dive right in and enjoy.

Interview with Nathan Hangen of Ignition Deck

Listen to the audio version

There’s a challenge in everything

This is the undercurrent of the interview.

It’s no easy task to start a business, promote your product and continue to grow. Embrace the suck as Nathan warns us. We explore what Nathan and his team had to do to launch his product while battling off cease and desist letters, including the usual the organic growth issues.

One question I was always curious about — How do you price a plugin that enables folks to raise millions? Hit play for the answer

From there, we move into discussing how he handles features, upgrades and new product launches. If you find yourself going in 100 directions, you’re not alone and hopefully this interview helps you deal with that pressure.

I’m going to go on record that this is one of the best interviews I’ve done. There’s so much good discussion here. Don’t miss it.

Matt Report Pro

I recorded this episode WAY back in October when I first started outlining a Pro version. I mention in the interview the URL is /register but it’s actually /join — sorry about that!

I’m going to release another post diving into the features of a Pro version, but for now here’s what you’re getting:

Members only WordPress entrepreneurs forum

Access to the Pro segments that I record with each guest (including Nathan!)

Monthly training/webinar calls about various topics

Monthly ProCasts that are special episodes with some of the top WordPress experts

Access to myself and my guests prior to the interview

This month’s ProCast is with Chris Lema, Tom McFarlin and Pippin Williamson! It’s over an hour of talk about finding better clients, scaling your business and increasing your rates.

So if you want more Matt Report content, the Pro plan is the place to be. If you simply want to support my efforts, this is another great way to show your support. This does not mean I’m going to stop the podcast or hold back from creating great FREE content for you. By monetizing I can build a better product, hire staff and serve you in new endeavors.

This is one of my favorite events that I do and I hope you enjoy it just the same. This episode is FULL of awesome WordPress goodness. Tune in to see 3 great startups trying to make it in this crazy world and the advice our judges panel has to offer.

Startup Challenge 2

Listen to the audio version

Sponsor the next episode!

Donate $5

Sponsor for $200

I'll name my own price!

Name your price:

So I know what to call you :)

Total

$0.00

Email

So I can e-mail you access to content and thank you.

Name

So I can say hi to "your name."

Website

For your sponsorship link

Ad read

"Brought to you by Chris Lema and the Lema School of Greatness!"

An international affair

I’m pumped to release episode 2 of the startup challenge and this time it went global!

Five different countries were represented in this hour long show of entertainment, education and WordPress goodness. Congrats to everyone who took part in the episode and I wish them the best in their entrepreneurial journey.

Sponsorship

]]>https://mattreport.com/episode-2-wordpress-startup-challenge/feed/0From WordPress developer to product designerhttps://mattreport.com/wordpress-developer-product-designer/
https://mattreport.com/wordpress-developer-product-designer/#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 15:17:33 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3584Who wants to be in the client services field when you can be in product? After all, the road to the Golden Chalice is lined with riches and bountiful treasures.

Create an MVP, launch it, and splash into your pool of coins like Uncle Scrooge.

No one ever warns you about the long weekends, iterations, support and the hurtle of marketing. Who will pay us for our goods? There’s a lot more sweat equity that today’s startup buzz doesn’t warn you about. Not only do you have to build the product, but you have to build the platform you plan to sell and promote it on.

Then there’s the task of choosing the right price to support growth and your existing customer base. Phew, just when we thought it was easy peasy.

Interview with Andrew Norcross

Listen to the audio version

Understanding your customer

If you’re a WordPress developer or a product lead — don’t miss this episode.

Understanding the customer is a recurring trend that I’m picking up on with featured Matt Report guests. We’re talking deeper than just understanding the customers problem you’re solving. I mean really know them and how they will interact with your product. How will they request support from you and your team? What’s their level of expectation?

All of this should go into the planning, marketing and promotion of your product. This isn’t rocket science, it’s been around since the 1960’s as the Four P’s.

Product

Price

Promotion

Place

But as developers we get lost in the mix of building.

We like code. We like tight, clean, efficient code. Even if it works we want it to be better. Why? It works for the customer, just let it go.

After all, everything on the web is iterative. Isn’t this why we have versions and github?

My advice to developers

At least from the business and marketing side — don’t forget about the little people.

People that don’t understand what’s going on under the hood and don’t care for that matter. They bought your product to solve a specific problem but once the purchase is made, you have to take off your engineer hat (in most cases) and throw on the white gloves.

It’s about customer service.

It’s about getting feedback.

It’s about business development.

Oh, and it’s also about your next version.

Provide great customerservice to get better feedback and ask for referrals (biz dev). Use all of this cache to enhance your next version.

Granted you will have some customers that don’t alight perfectly and that’s OK. It’s business. Invest in your first 100 customers and roll from there.

About the featured guest

What are your thoughts on launching an MVP vs a refined product? Let us know in the comments below!

]]>https://mattreport.com/wordpress-developer-product-designer/feed/6WordPress blogs to follow in 2014https://mattreport.com/wordpress-blogs-to-follow-in-2014/
https://mattreport.com/wordpress-blogs-to-follow-in-2014/#commentsFri, 17 Jan 2014 19:45:38 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3386Now that those darn daily blogging resoluters are cooling off…who remains and who are you going to follow?

Sure there’s Tom and Chris or perhaps even Curtis. We know that Brad and Pippin do their thing too. Oh and John. We can’t forget about John.

But who else are you following throughout 2014 in the WordPress-o-sphere? What other WordPress people are inspiring you to do awesome things?

Here’s a few I’m excited for:

Carrie Dils – Sweet Jesus! There’s some great content coming out of her publishing platform that you need to tap into. If you’re a Genesis developer or a Southern charmer, add this to your Feedly.

Jake Goldman – Jake? Where have you been buddy? We haven’t seen you since September 8th 2013. I’m still adding you to my radar.

Daniel Espinoza – Not the jewelry guy (an ‘S’), the WordPress guy (a ‘Z’)! He’s got an amazing journey going on that I think you all need to follow and comment on.

Bob Dunn – As if I even need to remind you! It’s not a WordCamp after party without the Dunn.

Which blogs should we follow? Let us know in the comments!

]]>https://mattreport.com/wordpress-blogs-to-follow-in-2014/feed/8AppPresser: Launching a product with zero competitionhttps://mattreport.com/launching-a-product-with-zero-competition/
https://mattreport.com/launching-a-product-with-zero-competition/#commentsTue, 14 Jan 2014 20:35:17 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3376Dare I say it’s easy to launch a product when there’s a competitor in the wild?

How about easier?

It’s one challenge to build a competing product and grow a business, it’s a whole other challenge to create something new with no competitors.

This is scary stuff

Let’s say you wanted to launch a contact form plugin. You would look at Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms and see what they were up to. Your team would probably start by saying, “How can we make this easier?” or “Can we make a better UI?” Then you’re off to the races. You’ve got a foundation and a blueprint to work with.

Well, what if you don’t have a competitor to base your version 1 off of? What if no one actually wants to buy your new idea?

The greater the risk the greater the return.

As for AppPresser, they have no model to work from. There’s no standard for building iOS or Android apps based on WordPress because it doesn’t exist — until now.

In this episode, we’re going to look at how Scott hooked up with WebDevStudios and why it’s important to work with other teams on projects this size. A feat that I tip my cap to, as most folks charged with a startup idea want to control it all.

I hope you enjoy this special episode with the team from AppPresser!

Launching a product that has no competition

If it hasn’t been created yet – ask yourself why.

Too challenging?

Too costly?

No market?

However, if your gut is telling you to build this, here’s a few methods that I recommend to test your market.

I’ve talked about it in this post, but your first step should be to start growing an audience today. Take your idea and chisel it down to the most consumable pill to swallow. If you’ve got plans for every feature and every platform, pick the most popular and roll with that. Start the elevator pitch to friends, family and your Twitter following. If no one gets it or isn’t too convinced, throw it back in the oven.

You don’t want to launch half baked.

If you can’t put it into words, try using a presentation or video demonstration using Screenflow. Slideshows with big simlpe text and keywords work great. If you can’t dive into code right away, simulate your clicks or product screens using animation. This is another great way to demonstrate a walk through without having to actually code something.

It’s all about the pitch and presentation when you don’t have a similar competitor to tackle.

“We’re just like Easy Digital Downloads, but easier!” Imagine that, but you get my point.

Of course you are! If you’re not, you can use these services for any form of online business.

In part 1, we’ll briefly cover WordPress hosting, a few plugins, and a couple or my choice productivity tools. There’s some cross compatibility from the blogging tips post, but I’ve wrapped some new context around the areas that apply. This post was inspired by Carrie Dils and her review of SaaS software for her own WordPress business.

I hope this helps you make some new decisions and enables you to run a better WordPress business.

Tools of the WordPress trade

Listen to the audio version

Some of the following links are affiliate links. They help pay for the show and put food on the table for my family. Thank you!

WordPress hosting

As I stated in the podcast and in the video, this is not an in-depth review of WordPress hosts. This is a quick fly-by of hosts I’ve use and how you can use them too. I do plan on discussing WordPress hosts more in depth in another post.

Linode

Linode is a great VPS service if you’re looking to get your hands dirty. Their offerings are powerful and affordable. If you’re looking to host many WordPress websites and you know your way around Linux security give these guys a shot. In terms of uptime and performance I’ve had great results. Their support is also fast and friendly which is very important.

Pros:

Affordable

Powerful features

Great support

Cons:

Support is not WordPress specific

You have to know how to configure your own linux instance

Your on the line for major performance or security issues

Digital Ocean

A $5 a month stomping ground. There’s a handful of localhost development environments, but there’s nothing quite like the real thing. Digital Ocean provides little droplets for running various flavors of Linux. Like Linode, you will need to be up to speed on setting up a Linux environment and locking down anything you don’t want the bad guys to get. I think this is a great solution for testing plugins or running dev environments.

Pros:

$5 a month

Fast

Easy

Cons:

Not sure how their product will scale compared to a Linode

You still have to configure/support yourself

SiteGround

Support. Support. Super fast support. This is the most important factor for me. Period. This site has run on SG for the last 3 – 4 months and I’ve been blown away by their level of support. I’m not just talking talking level 1 “we got your message and we’ll work on this” SOP responses – I’m talking full blown, in-depth responses. Backups, staging servers, and WordPress specific optimization plans are also available.

Pros:

Awesome support

Affordable

Feature rich

Cons:

Still a shared environment

Not your typical “managed WordPress” host

Namecheap

Not much to say here other than it’s my go to source for registering domains. Easy to use control panel with zero fluff or complexity. They also have an awesome API to tap into if you’re into that kind of thing.

Pros:

Unadulterated domain registration

Affordable

Cons

They don’t give me free domains

Plugins

SearchWP + FacetWP

I love the combination of these two plugins for building search rich sites. We build a lot of sites for travel and tourism that end up needing a directory of content. I’m also working on a podcast search function for this site leveraging both that I’ll do a write up on. If you need to extend your search capability, look no further!

Pros

Better search

Faceted search

Cons

You need to know how to build some basic template files for search output

WPTouch

Do’t get me wrong, I love responsive design but sometimes it’s not the best for every situation. Further, if you’re selling your client on the ability to manage mobile content and the layout of it — this plugin is for you. Their latest version is awesome and I don’t think it gets enough credit.

Pros

Super simple mobile website development

Awesome add-on features

Great looking themes

Cons

Not for the purist web developer

Unsure how it will handle scale or truly unique layouts

Advanced Custom Fields

9 out of 10 custom WordPress projects I’ve done require some type custom post type and group of custom fields. ACF is a plugin I can say I absolutely enjoy using. The admin UI is buttery smooth and intuitive which makes for a a great combo when handing the keys over to a client.

Pros

Awesome UI

Great for rapid prototyping

Add-ons

Cons

I’d love to see more powerful add-ons

You still have to know how to build templates for output

Productivity

Trello

I love lists. I also love boards and cards thanks to Trello. I didn’t make the switch form Basecamp to Trello just because it’s free either. It’s simply a more productive environment for collaborating with my team and the tasks/projects we have at hand. The fact that it’s super reactive and real time doesn’t hurt either. Looking for a great productivity tacker? Try Trello.

Pros

Free

Super easy

Share files, tasks and more with teammates

Cons

It’s not a place for clients

Upload limits on free plan. (seriously, just pay)

Screenflow

If you’re training clients or documenting custom features do it with Screenflow. If you want to start your very own podcast, do it with Screenflow. Want to make product demonstrations? You guessed it. Do it with Screenflow.

Pros

Best screen recording software on the market. (Mac)

Easy to use

Export directly to YouTube or Vimeo

Cons

Premium price tag

I’d like to see more effects

I’d like to see more editing capabilities for audio & video

That’s a wrap

First, I want you to let us know what tools you’re using in the comments section.

Second, if you’re just starting out with your new WordPress business shoot me an e-mail if you have a question about any of these services or apps. I’m happy to help anyway I can. Don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list to stay up to date.

I’m also on that list and because of that I’ve been thinking a lot about pricing.

In fact, my friend Chris recently published a new e-book, The Price is Right An Introduction to Product Pricing that I downloaded for my two-day getaway in Maine. A quick read you can finish in less than an hour that gives you some solid advice for your next product launch.

If you’re a resolutioner looking for some pricing advice you’ve come to the right place!

Two new products, one new pricing strategy

In Chris’s book he unearth’s the discussion about product pricing for operating a sustainable business. Makes sense right? We all want to be profitable in order to pay ourselves, our team and reinvest back into the business. That’s the hope for any business — not just WordPress.

In my opinion the WordPress product business has found itself cornered over the last few years.

The days of low priced plugins and unlimited everything are going by the way side. No longer are we working a full-time job and selling themes on the side. Our client service commitments are winding down as our new SaaS businesses spin up. It’s a natural maturation process that a lot of us are going through right now.

It makes sense right? How can we operate on unlimited everything forever? At some point there’s going to be a customer or situation that totally obliterates our support costs.

Look at these two new plugin packages:

AppPresser Agency model is $499 for unlimited apps w/ 1 year of support.

What we see is higher than “average” pricing with an annual renewal on upgrades and support. We saw Woo do this last year with other companies following suite. This is a good thing. Let’s stop the race to the bottom.

If the market can bear it, raise prices and kill off unlimited support.

The bad news, you can’t just raise prices

Now before you run out and jack up the prices on your website for the hell of it, look at the context of your pricing.

If you’re running a web services business and you can’t justify that cost you’re doing it wrong. A high end iOS development company isn’t going to move a muscle for anything less than 100k and even if you hire a freelancer off oDesk you’re still looking at 10 – 15x the cost of AppPresser.

On the other hand, our pal Andrew is charging $149 licensing for 50 Genesis sites — that’s less than you pay for a cup of Starbucks PER site! Again, if you can’t sell 1 site for greater than $2.98 you need to hire me.

So in a market segmentation of folks like you and me, I’d be telling the story that these solutions are mere pennies on the dollar to what we’re charging our client.

My 2 tips on pricing

I don’t want to give away everything that’s in The Price is Right but Chris warns us there’s no perfect science to pricing your product. We must test our pricing and prepare ourselves for change.

My first tip is use your gut.

I’ll be launching the Pro version of Matt Report, a members only section, and my first tier of pricing is based solely on what I feel I would pay. I like to identify one strong value proposition or scratch one major itch and put an honest price tag on it.

It makes me feel more confident which transcends into the product and marketing of the service. Afraid you’re not charging enough? We never do — that’s ok because we have options.

From there I’ll build out additional pricing packages that add more value for a higher cost. You can do this too if you want to avoid messing with your initial product pricing. It allows you to set that base level price and A/B test the other packages instead.

Then there’s the use of an asterisk. If you launch with the plan to raise your rates, you can add this to your promotional material. That way you’re giving customers a chance to buy in low while you work out your internal support costs.

Second tip, I recommend getting the book and spending an hour with it. It’s a collection of some great examples and stories that will get you thinking in the right direction. Plus, using my link will earn Chris and I a few pennies and we’ll love you for it.

What are your thoughts on pricing? Have a story to share? Let us know in the comments!

Instead of landing on the homepage and seeing the blog roll, the visitor will be presented with a unique landing page with a few new options. I’ll be using the Gravity Forms plugin and the Mailchimp addon to connect visitors to my newsletter.

I use GF as my contact form because I can connect it to Trello and other services. Now I can use it’s built in conversion tracking to help with some basic split testing. Here’s how!

Split Testing

This might be obvious to the seasoned web marketer, but if you’re new to all of this, split testing can yield some really good results.

Let’s say you’re looking for conversions to your newsletter signup.

You might try two different call to actions or headlines to entice someone to enter their e-mail. It doesn’t have to be just copy that you’re split testing either. You can try various colors, font sizes, buttons etc to measure these conversions. If you’re a Gravity Forms user already, you may have noticed that there’s a conversion column that spits out your percentage of signups.

At the bottom of my blog posts, I have an after post widget that holds a gravity form signup to my newsletter. I added this about a month ago and I’m seeing a 3% conversion. Wether or not that is a good number is still to be determined. I have many call to actions for my newsletter, most noticeably a popup I run on top of the page load.

Pro tip: you’re going to need some traffic to your site before you split test. If you don’t have enough traffic to compare two different call to actions it’s going to be difficult to determine if one converts better over the other.

A lesson in split testing and pop-ups

Pop-ups, love em or hate em?

I had a discussion a few months ago in the WordPress Entrepreneurs group about using them on your site. You hear how much people hate them and how annoying they are. All we can imagine is our old infected Windows 98 machine.

I had been running one on my site for a while when my friend Curtis McHale mentioned he didn’t like using them. He recommend I try this plugin, which slides up from the bottom right. Less intrusive as it were, because who likes a pop-up?

So I decided to run a major split test which cost me a lot of subscribers and potential future revenue. I disabled the popup that we all hate — and here’s the result:

Wait a minute, I thought people hated popups? If this were the case, shouldn’t we see a lower conversion rate as people close out and escape these pesky overlays?
Before you say it, no, I do not blame Curtis

Kicking it back on for December, I saw 5x and above average conversions.

I was on the fence about using the popup myself. If I go to a site that I don’t normally frequent and I get hit with the popup, I’m trained to close it.

But that’s just one visit.

What happens when I return to this content that I really like? On my second and third visits the popup is now a consideration and not an annoyance. As you can see from my Mailchimp graph above, dropping the the popup for the month of November really hurt me. Kicking it back on for December, I saw 5x and above average conversions.

Now that I know popups don’t ruin my signups, but increase them — I can now dig deeper and split test each popup. Pretty amazing stuff.

Split testing Gravity Forms

What we’re doing is randomly serving up a call to action and e-mail field from Gravity Forms. It’s not 100% “the right way” because I’m not setting a cookie for the session of the visitor. If you refresh the page, you have a 50/50 chance of seeing the other headline. If you’re doing split testing for e-commerce, you probably don’t want your visitor to see two different prices simply by hitting reload.

That aside, if you’re looking to try this with your Gravity Forms, here’s the code! (Special thanks to Robert Neu for hooking this up for me on a Saturday afternoon!)

Except for you or them, the critic. You know who she is — she’s the internal voice. The critic that follows us around wherever we go. It doesn’t like the choices we make or the direction we’re heading in. Creeping around the corner at every pivot of our business or design mockup we spend hours putting together.

Soon, the critic starts to convince us they are right. We want to give up — what’s the point right?

They’re right, I’ll never make this work.

This is too hard, I should just go back to the couch.

Ugh, this sucks!

Kill the (inner) critic.

Everyone is a critic

Me, you and them.

Remember when Yahoo! launched a new logo campaign? I didn’t think their new logo was a big departure from the old, but critics around the world hated it.

Many of you might be launching your new brand this month and getting the evil eye from that inner critic. If you are, you should talk to Chris Ford, who recently helped Rob rebrand his company. The point is, you need to recognize that this is the first phase of change.

How did it go for Yahoo!?

Look at that…growth!

They didn’t wallow around in people’s criticism over the logo. I’d go as far as to say the logo wasn’t for their customers, but to mark an internal milestone. Making a statement to their team that it was time for change.

Step 2 on the way to making an impact, will come in the form of commitment. How committed are you to this new change and will you achieve what you set out to do?

Tell us how you deal with critics in the comments below. Think a friend should read this? Share it on Twitter.

What were your first two posts about? Were they epic and attractive to a swath of your Twitter followers? I want to help kickstart the promise you just made to yourself and your audience with a bit of advice:

Blog small and confident or go home.

Making an impact

As you stare up at the Mount Kilimanjaro that is daily blogging, I want you to realize it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds. I remember back to my days in elementary school and how my fingers hurt from writing on that grayish paper with all the dotted lines. Practicing cursive and writing short stories for my teachers until my hands cramped up.

I hated it.

I wasn’t good at it and it all felt forced — because really, it was.

I’m sure the English elitists will tell you that today’s blogger is a hack. Much like any other profession where some newcomer hits the scene only to cut corners or not use the “proper” process. But you know, who cares?

“Oh my God you edited core?!?!” Comes to mind.

So here’s that jolt I was referring to:

You don’t need 1,000 words to leave an impact

Speak softly, and carry a big stick – Theodore Roosevelt

Blogging small.

We were taught that writing pages upon pages was the right thing to do. It’s probably why the word blogging strikes fear into freshman bloggers and especially our customer. Why did I have to write a 30 page report which could be summed up in 2? Do all 1,000 words leave an impact, or was it just the major headlines as you scanned?

Compact blog posts with powerful and actionable advice will be critical to your content marketing.

Hater’s gonna hate — prove them wrong

For my buddy Tom

Confidence > all.

Are you worried about your conversational tone in each post? Maybe you’re ducking from the grammar police.

“I’m told that proper content marketing on average contains 837 words, an infographic, and will get shared 12.7 times a day.”, you might be saying to yourself.

Blah dee blah blah.

I want you to produce content you’re proud of — 200 words or 2,000, graphics or no graphics. Leave an impact on us, not on your daily routine.

]]>https://mattreport.com/blog-small/feed/6My 3 keywords for 2014https://mattreport.com/3-keywords-2014/
https://mattreport.com/3-keywords-2014/#commentsWed, 01 Jan 2014 14:55:34 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3222If you’re like me, it’s hard to sum up all of the little things you’re striving for in the new year.

It’s all the same rhetoric to us:

Lose weight

Save money

Have “me” time

Be more organized

I’ve always tried to approach every challenge, task, or situation from a 30-thousand foot view to find the big hot spots to go after first.

Where can I start to make a big impact before tweaking every little nut and bolt under the hood? New Year resolutions are no different and thanks to my pal Chris Brogan, I’ve got a little 3 keyword strategy to use.

3 Keywords for the new year

I’ll look at using these keywords as reminders or kickstarting verbs when I’m in a particular situation.

For example, we all know being a solopreneur is tough. If you don’t think so, you haven’t been in it long enough and I advise you to read this post by John Saddington: 27 Pounds.Whenever I’m feeling a bit down or struggling with my work, I recall a basic phrase I have on my whiteboard, “I love what I do every day.”

Simple and effective. I’ve trained myself to remove stress, at least for the short term, when I visualize that statement. Something out of Jason Bourne I know, but over time it works, try it.

Community

Not the WordPress community — my community.

I’ve had the privilege of building up a stronger following over the course of 2013 and it’s time to start giving back and building stuff for you.

I encourage you to do the same.

Start with your supporters in real life, all the way to the twittersphere, and then start branching out to other like minded folks as best you can. Do good by them and soon enough you’re sprouting up your own little community.

You might see these as boring links, but each has it’s own little community you can engage with.

What community will you build for yourself?

Courage

This is a big one.

Do you have the courage to change your day to day norm? For those of you trying to lose weight, look at it from the bigger picture. What little tweak can you make to lose 5 pounds in a month?

Is it drink more water or run a mile every day? We get too caught up in this hyper focused reality of having to lose weight NOW or making big changes TODAY, that we forget this is a marathon not a sprint.

Years ago I was really heavy and managed to lose 40 pounds by practicing the 4-hour body routine. I’ve managed to keep 90% of it off, but like other normal human beings, I fall off track.

But let’s get back to business, do you have the courage to totally pivot and flip your current business model on it’s head? I’ll be trying that in 2014 and hope you will be there for the ride.

Tell me about your courage.

Me Me Me

It’s actually, us us us!

What can we do to give back to our own mental, physical or financial well being? Are we spending enough time with our friends and family? Are we doing the things that really make us happy?

If it’s what you’re struggling with, perhaps you need the courage to start a supporting community?

I want to make my impact by helping people do all of this “stuff.” Ah yes, the old cliche. Everyone doing this, says that. For a while I was trying to figure out how I could say that differently. How can I stand out?

I’ve come to realize that this world is pretty big. The internet is big. My local community is big. You don’t come across a lot of people that say, “Oh God, you do that too?” At least I haven’t yet and when I do, I’d say the odds are still in my favor.

So what will you do this year that is all about you?

Got your 3 keywords? Let me know in the comments. Love what I do here? Hate what I do? Join the newsletter and let’s talk about it!

If you’re just finding out about my show this will serve as a great starting point for you. I’ve been lucky enough to talk to some seriously smart people in the WordPress world as they allowed me to share their story with you. If you’re looking to improve your WordPress business, you’ve come to the right place. (You might also consider joining the e-mail newsletter.)

As I move on to 2014, I hope to bring in more people from outside of WordPress in order to expand the breadth of our knowledge. As much as we love this software and the community, it is not the only factor to our success.

#2 Jose Caballer

#1 Pippin Williamson

Learn how Pippin grew from a single plugin, to one of the most popular plugin marketplaces on the web.

]]>https://mattreport.com/top-10-podcast-episodes-2013/feed/0Top 10 blog posts of 2013https://mattreport.com/top-10-blog-posts-2013/
https://mattreport.com/top-10-blog-posts-2013/#commentsMon, 30 Dec 2013 16:19:47 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3205It’s that time of year again where all the top “blah blah blah” come out — so did you think I was just going to sit out on the fun?

I’ve scoured through my JetPack stats, Google analytics and all of the great big data here on The Matt Report to come up with my top 10 blog posts of 2013.

If you missed out on most of the year with me, now we can recap it together. If you want to get more personal for 2014 join the newsletter.

Starting off this amazing list is a post all about WordPress business. Go figure, right? I outline some of the goals for Matt Report here and call out some of the other amazing folks doing businessy things in the WordPress world.

One of my favorite posts that I’m happy to see made the list. Back when I wrote this, the WordPress news and “media” scene were heating up. It’s amazing to see that a lot of that died down, but I suspect many new year’s resolutions will get people back into the game.

The #1 blog post of 2013: How to find more clients! It’s the #1 question I get asked on the newsletter and for the upcoming Matt Report Pro series, you’re going to get all of those tricky questions answered.

I hope you enjoyed this list and if you found it useful, please give it a share. I appreciate it!

Tomorrow on the blog, I’ll release the Top 10 Matt Report Podcasts. Can you guess who is number 1?

]]>https://mattreport.com/top-10-blog-posts-2013/feed/06 Killer market validation tipshttps://mattreport.com/killer-market-validation-tips/
https://mattreport.com/killer-market-validation-tips/#commentsSat, 28 Dec 2013 17:00:22 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3181Yesterday I posted 4 tips for content marketing and today I want to followup with how you can get instant market validation while that audience grows.

Arguably, the methods I mention in that article will help you validate your idea with the audience on the respective channels — but even that could be a slow train.

Specifically, I want to address a question from Nick Haskins, “How do you validate an idea if you’re not known in the industry?”

Market validation

It’s a safe bet to understand there’s no perfect science to this, especially if you’re creating something that is disrupting a market.

It’s why products fail (or take off) and get pulled off the shelf (or get 80% of the market)– as entrepreneurs we lead with our gut, for better or for worse.

There is one constant however, an audience. Two, twelve, or one-thousand people to leverage for market validation.

Nick brings up a great point about being known and how that may pose as a hurdle for some not so fortunate.Sure it was “easy” for me to get some validation on my mentor post because I have traffic, a mailing list, and a twitter following.

Yes I do a podcast, and if I’m lucky, get a couple of blog posts out every week. My point is, the road to get to here wasn’t easy or quick. It’s why I urge you to start building that audience now and not waiting until you have your beta product.

Do it, do it now.

Find an audience in 5 days, not 5 years.

Yep, it took me 5 years to get here (what is here anyway?)

Whenever I’m faced with a new challenge, I try not to look at the grand number of factors against me. In this case, you don’t need 1000 people on a mailing list to talk to — you just need, say, 10?

10 is an achievable number, let’s roll with that. Practice the scenarios below for copious amounts of feedback and market validation! You should be able to score 10 easily.

Niche down

Don’t knock on my door saying you need to validate your social sharing plugin for WordPress blogs. There’s plenty of choices out there and chances are, you’re not going to catch my attention with it.

Join a community

Like I warned above, you need to find the right community for you. For example, I can’t seem to get any traction in the WordPress Reddit scene. I’ve posted articles there and get very few interested, in fact, I think they get removed — but no worries

Don’t go in with your market validation question locked and loaded. Spend a few days adding value, engaging in conversation, and then try your hand at getting feedback.

Local meetups

You all know how great WordPress meetups and WordCamps are — but find something else that compliments your niche.

Login to Meetup.com and see if you can find something in your area. I spend time going to local marketing and business meetups. When I say WordPress only about 1 in 4 know what I’m talking about, but that’s ok.

If I were Bob, I’d go in saying, “I help people understand how to use their website.” If the person nods with understanding, we’ve accomplished some small form of validation.

Either way, I encourage you to get up out yo seat!

Add value

I love this one and I think it might get overlooked.

Try adding value to another product or service. Find a niche within a niche. A child theme, within a child theme

Let’s say you niche down to running a WordPress service shop for small athletic stores. You will make the best athletic/running websites for the athletes of our world with amazing quality at affordable prices. Guess what, you need your own website first!

Do you spend time crafting one of your own? How can we make a splash out of the gate? How can we validate?

Look at something like Carrie Dils’ Utility Theme and build a valuable case study using it or even a plugin specific to your new found niche.

Gauge her reaction, guage the reaction of the Twittersphere and communities you’ve joined. Was your idea validated or will you pivot?

P.S. Carrie is a marathoner — you should take this idea and run withit!

Do it your own way

Here’s what is amazing about all of this — you can do it your own way.

Start your own community, do a local meetup, or broadcast your live stream. You don’t need permission and there’s no right way. It’s validation in itself. If no one is hooking up to you in 30 days, you’re not niche enough or you need to overhaul your elevator pitch.

I started The Matt Report when no one was really talking about WordPress business like we do today. Now it’s being baked in to a lot of what we see and hear around us.

Now there are PPC campaigns, impression campaigns, and even some podcasting could be looked at as a campaign — but not your overall content marketing.

Here’s why: If you’re looking at content creation as as this thing you “do” and not an expression of yourself or the company, the passion isn’t there and you’re just flipping switches. Content has to be compelling, informative and most of all authentic. You can’t just bust out a stencil and trace the lines to create your blog post — if you did everyone would be pumping out the same thing.

Content Marketing for Entrepreneurs

Listen to the audio version

The best time to create content is right when you start that next big idea.I’m not just talking about the blogging daily, I’m talking about publishing content on various channels — start your a media empire.

“But I’m not ready for marketing!” you shout.

That’s, ok, in fact it’s perfect! So, many of you have heard of the lean startup methodology, start with something that solves this small problem and get it into the hands of others as quickly as possible. This production line validates the business and the product with a niche market or case study.

You can validate your idea with content marketing before you even begin to put sweat equity into coding.

Validate your idea with a blog post

Recently, I posted about the benefits of becoming a mentor. If you haven’t thought about sharing your experiences with a young padawan, head on over to that post and consider it — mentoring will change your life.

That little blog post, or seed as I refer to it, had some great feedback. Folks were leaving comments and connecting with each other to help out. I received a bunch of e-mails from around the world looking to see if they could get help.

Ok, this idea is validated.

I launched an MVP of the mentor program over at WP Mentor and as of this writing there are 17 listings for mentors and mentees. More validation, now with actual results and practice.

Gauging design feedback on Instagram

https://cloudup.com/cxdzDJr9rrz

I see Brian Gardner do this a lot. Now, I’m not saying he does this on purpose, but it’s something you can certainly leverage. Use Instagram to post design concepts or mockups. Look for comments there and grow an audience. It’s a great channel to add to your media empire.

Lastly, cool design photos are perfect for that medium and it’s not out of place. Look at each channel you create content as if it were TV. Would you put the same advertisement out for your company during an episode of Walking Dead as you would The Today Show?

More channels + diverse audience = quality feedback.

Screencasts for beta plugins

Got a plugin or SaaS business that’s still not ready for the public consumption? A screencast is a perfect piece of media to shed some early light on your product.

The above example is a 3 minute walk through of BackupBuddy, not an actual product demo, but you get the idea.It doesn’t have to be long and detailed — remember your plugin is still in it’s early days.

What you want to do is give someone a fly by, or series of casts, to gauge the feedback. YouTube provides some deep metrics of engagement, so you can really have fun in the data to see what the audience is liking — or what they don’t like.

Don’t forget, build up your audience on YouTube. On launch day, instead of having no one to market to, you will have thousands of eager subscribers to pitch the product to.

And when you have NO product…

“Hey Matt, this is great but I don’t even have a product yet!”

Not a problem. Do you have a cofounder or another screen you can record?

Produce some live Google Hangouts to demonstrate your idea with some basic slide shows and give us insight to your concept. As the stages mature, you can record your weekly or monthly meetings with your team and really give the audience some insight to how you’re growing the business.

Think about it, this early stage audience is going to make for great early adopters when you come to market. Better yet, you might be able to scoop up some beta testers which you will inevitably need. If they are spending the time to follow your new idea, chances are they want it at launch day or at the very least, they will refer you to someone who does.

Building your media empire

So here’s my point: Build your audience while you build your product.

Ultimately our products are going to change. You’re going to find a new use case or someone isn’t going to like XYZ feature and things change. The hard part will be selling these changes all over again. It’s also going to be harder to discover a new audience later than from the beginning stages.

Today it’s super easy to start a podcast or blog daily. Don’t get overwhelmed with all of the channels available to you. Take a step back and look at where you’re succeeding already. Is it Twitter? Let’s grow there. Is it a Facebook group? Nurture it.

You can do a lot or a little, but don’t be afraid to hit publish and start today!

]]>https://mattreport.com/content-tips-marketing-for-startups/feed/4Launching WP Mentorhttps://mattreport.com/launching-wp-mentor/
https://mattreport.com/launching-wp-mentor/#commentsTue, 24 Dec 2013 16:37:53 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3164Recently I made a post about becoming a WordPress mentor and the feedback has been really great so far. With that, I figured why not give this little initiative it’s own home?

I know a lot of us are super helpful on Twitter and in the .org forums, but perhaps we can move the needle a bit further by working one on one. I know that I’ve found great success and satisfaction mentoring students at my local community college, so I think the same can be achieved here.

Don’t be scared

If you’re looking to become a mentee, but you’re afraid to put yourself out there, crush that fear right now.

Hell, I’m looking for a mentor, so what are you waiting for?

This doesn’t have to carry a lot of overhead.

I’ll let you decide how you want to work with one another, but I don’t think this has to carry a lot of overhead. In fact, it will be more effective if it doesn’t. I’m planning on dedicating an hour or so a month to a small startup team that’s looking for some pointers. You could do an hour a day if you wanted to, but I’ll leave that up to you.

Same goes for folks looking to be a mentee, don’t expect 100% access to your mentor — unless she says so.

The great thing is, this can be whatever you want it to be. I don’t know where this is going, I’m just a fan of testing little projects to see what they become.

Post your mentorship

I’m using Mike Jolley’s WP Job Manager to power the site for now. It seemed like the quickest way for me to put something together with little overhead. It looks like it will do the trick, but I’m open to feedback.

There’s 2 “job” categories: Mentor & Mentee

Once you satisfy your posting, you can log back in and say that the job is “filled” — should be pretty snazzy. Feel free to fill out as much or as little as the info needed per listing.

Merry Christmas everyone — thanks for making 2013 a great year for me and my team!

You know what I’m talking about. It’s the stigma a lot of car salesman fall prey to. Lucky for me, I never fell into that category — or at least no one ever told me.

I’m in a mastermind group and the current topic is selling. How to sell, when to ask for the sale, and avoiding the hard sale. When people think about car sales, that’s all they can think about — the sales cycle.

Growing up in a family owned dealership, it was the entire process that sold people — not just the price.

The poor car salesman

I want to spend a few second chatting about why car salesman get a bad wrap.

Sure there are mega-dealerships that employee hundreds, if not thousands of sales people. High turn over, all about volume kind of places. But you also have to take into account the brand of car they are selling.

You don’t typically see this in a Porsche or BMW store. For good reason.

See, not so different from the web services business, customers are very educated. I haven’t been in the car scene for about 6 years, so I’m almost certain there’s even more data available to the customer than when I was selling.

No other industry makes it this easy for a customer to negotiate a price to a competitor down the street for a competing product and the SAME product than the car industry does. Sprinkle in some internet research and the customer knows your costs, including how much the manufacturer withholds for shipping and advertising fees.

The customer is prepared to do battle.

Mix that with mega stores, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a western showdown. I was taught to sell the entire experience, not just the price.

Selling the experience

Next, we’ll look at 3 scenarios I took from the car industry and how I applied them to my web services career. These are just snapshots that represent a greater process in each case.

The dealership

Car salesman: We’re conveniently located right off of the highway. We’ve got a 20 stall garage and generous waiting room, so that your service visits aren’t a hassle. We’ve been at this location for 30 years and the staff is friendly and accommodating.

Agency: We have a great studio space located down town in a historic mill. A majority of our team meets together in the space Monday through Friday working with one another on your project. We can arrange meetings on site if you’re not comfortable planning creative over Skype or conference calls.

The freelancer: I don’t have the overhead of rent, which allows me to add more value to our engagement. I’m flexible to meet at your location or a co-working space to review creative.

Service and support

Car salesman: “We have a call center and an online booking system, so making appointments or getting in touch with your customer rep will never be an issue. We routinely remind you of regular maintenance and have courtesy car service if your vehicle stays overnight.”

Agency: “We have a help desk ticketing system which is monitored 24/7 by a dedicated support team. Live chat and phone support is available during regular business hours Monday through Friday. Support and maintenance contracts are available to have a dedicated engineer monitor your website and general web consulting if needed.”

The freelancer: “I’m available to routinely update your website and provide support via e-mail. We can schedule Skype session to review something you might be struggling with. I use a managed WordPress host to ensure your site is backed up and secure.”

Delivery

Car salesman: “There’s a lot of technology in your new vehicle and important safety features I’d like to call to your attention. After we complete the vehicle walk around, I’d like to spend some time in the cabin reviewing how to customize the car to each driver. While we’re doing this, our customer service reps are preparing the paper work and the inspection sticker documents to complete our delivery.”

Agency: “Once the project is complete, we’ll schedule a training session for you and your team. We will cover the custom features of your new site, how your staff will access content, and the various workflows of publishing. Additional hours are available and we can schedule them with your project manager. Before launching, we’ll run through our launch checklist to make sure there are no interruptions.”

The freelancer: “I’ve created video screencasts that walk you through your new website. They will show you how to publish new content and how to setup new menu items. If you need additional help, I can recommend WordPress training or we can schedule another meeting.”

Will this work for you?

I hope you see where I’m going with this.

There are some finer points involved in each step, but you should see the trickle down effect. Each scenario is familiar no matter what business or stage of web services you’re in. The customer’s experience is what you should be focusing on and not just the hours on an invoice.

If your current clients aren’t seeing the value in this process — perhaps it’s time to find new clients.

I’d love to know what you think of this post in the comments. Don’t forget to subscribe if you like what’s going on here.

]]>https://mattreport.com/3-car-sales-tips-freelancer-web-agency/feed/2Test our new themehttps://mattreport.com/test-our-new-theme/
https://mattreport.com/test-our-new-theme/#commentsFri, 20 Dec 2013 16:22:05 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3151I’m looking for a few folks to help test our new photoblogging theme. This theme might be perfect for posting your ugly sweater Christmas party selfies or amazing winter landscapes.

What I need from you…

Install it, click around, and make a few posts that showcase your sweet photos. Perhaps you may even sync up your Pressgram account and give that a whirl.

It’s core focus is for making great photoblog posts with full screen slide show capabilities. However, WordPress themes are super flexible and I’d be interested to see if folks use it for straight up blogging too.

Then there’s the reason of being a down to Earth human being. Making connections not just for the tangible benefit, but to slow down and appreciate the greater being that makes this all so darn great.

I’ve said this about our Olympians before, it’s the people that truly drive this open source effort.

I don’t pop molly I rock Chris Ford

Wonderful segue, eh? I want you to remember this part.

I spoke at WordCamp Chicago this year and had the chance to grab dinner with Chris Lema and a host of others including Chris Ford.

I had never met Chris, founder of Creativity Included, until that event. More so, we hadn’t even really engaged in lengthy conversation that night. The important part is we both belong to this amazing community – heck, movement – which drives us to do great things.

Yesterday , I received a gift from Chris that includes a custom designed bottle opener and a note thanking me for the content I create for the community.

Truly humbling and thoughtful from my (our) peer in the WordPress community.

Whatever it might be, however you might achieve it and whomever it helps, I encourage you to give back to the people of WordPress.

For the business minded folk

This random act of kindness can go miles for your relationship. It’s as easy as buying them a book on Amazon or purchasing a year of Spotify streaming service.

Whatever makes a lasting impression it will beat out any kind of SEO or content marketing you create.

What does your WordPress community look like? Tell us in the comments.

]]>https://mattreport.com/wordpress-community/feed/0The Impact of Public Relationshttps://mattreport.com/the-impact-of-public-relations/
https://mattreport.com/the-impact-of-public-relations/#commentsMon, 16 Dec 2013 15:10:27 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3137Think about the high performing companies you subscribe to and the image they portray on the web, in social media, and within your inbox.

I’m a raving fan of a company that uses a monkey as part of their brand. Can you guess who that is?

Mailchimp.

Where the name might sound foolish and playful, it’s one of the smartest pieces of software I use on the web. I’m not embarrassed to refer you to their site and I know your entire experience will be a delight — then there’s the product — it just works.

Do the same principles apply to the tight knit WordPress community? Let’s discuss.

Public Relations for a WordPress business

Your first thought might be, public relations is the same no matter what business or organization you’re running. That might hold true, but the WordPress community is a funny duck.

When we evaluate our market, a lot of our customers are our peers. We’re following each other on Twitter, we’re meeting up at WordCamps across the world, and we’re enjoying monthly meetups. We know the quality of your code, the type of business you run, and often your favorite beer.

Connection is made: we come together to invest in each other’s skill and often the product that we develop.

You throw down your hard earned cash for a plugin you need or perhaps recommend a client purchase that theme own their own. You might be speaking at a local event and rattle off your favorite WordPress shop for those seeking help on a custom project.

I’d say 9 times our of 10 you’re doing this because of the bond you forged by following this company (sometimes, individual) online or at the very least, a colleague mentioned them.

Until WordPress is a household phrase like, I need to build a website, I think PR in our space is very important.

You are what you eat

I’m not saying that this is the be-all end-all of your business. I’m not saying it drives the bottom line either.

This is an evergreen, long tail or full brand strategy for the life of the business. In fact, it’s something that should come natural to a founder or to a team’s culture.

If there’s ZERO regard to one’s image — I’d say that there’s very little regard to satisfying one’s customer. At the very least, there’s little care to on boarding NEW customers.

The attention economy

I’ve been using this phrase for the last 6 months. This is an attention economy. Not just about wether you saw my blog post or listened to my podcast versus another — but that people are paying attention to you.

Competition can come out of thin air and no one is isolated from it.

In the end, here’s what I want you to do:

Build a great product

Nurture an audience

There are finer details that go along with building a great WordPress business, but to me, that’s just filler for this easy 2-step process.

Awesome new features in the roadmap? Sweet, can’t wait.

Works across all platforms? I’m excited.

You seemingly care about the audience that helped build the business? You’ve got a life long customer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Public Relations in your WordPress business. Fire away in the comments.

]]>https://mattreport.com/the-impact-of-public-relations/feed/2What to do with your business in 2014https://mattreport.com/business-2014/
https://mattreport.com/business-2014/#commentsSat, 14 Dec 2013 19:18:46 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3128This is a thought about what to do with your business, not what to do in it.

With the new year fast approaching, you might be starting to think about the goals you’d like to achieve. We’re going to look at cutting the fat from the business and why that’s important to your health — for the business and you.

Pareto principle

It’s said that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. It’s also said that an entrepreneur can launch a business with a minimal viable product based on that principle.

I agree with this, but there’s an unseen danger that creeps up on us over time.

See, entrepreneurs have this bug that drives us to chase shiny new objects. Before you know it, you’re taking on baggage of launching new ideas under the guise of the 80/20 rule. The connected world makes it so easy for us to research, spin up a prototype and create something new over night.

Then I ask myself, what part of this business am I not being fair to? I know how I ended up here, but which of these products am I holding on to that I’m just not loyal to anymore?

I must decide what to do with the business. Here’s a bit of a checklist I’ll use to get a gauge on things:

1. Do people get it?

Friends, family, co-workers, and my community at large. Do they get the product or idea? Are they still struggling to really grasp what it’s all about? You have to ask yourself the same thing. After 6 months of pitching a product, are people still struggling to understand it?

Is it time to pivot? Look at the rest of your business cache and compare notes.

2. Is it turning revenue?

Rather important, but not the whole deciding factor. Have you started selling your product or service yet? Are you raising prices or making more options available? Are sales going down?

Things get a bit challenging here, because as the founder of a product, you have that innate urge to say it’s going to succeed. This is when it’s crucial to look and see if your other products could be making more if you gave them a chance and stopped splitting your time with this one.

Think about it.

3. Are you still passionate about it?

Burn out, disinterest, clouded thoughts — the life we live.

You need to be passionate about everything. Every hour really. Let’s look at my (our) day to day — I (we) can easily put in 10 – 12 hours a day of work.

There’s days you can go straight through in a blink of an eye, others your done after 3 hours. I handle that by going for a jog, hitting the gym or taking a mental break. This is harder to do with a business or new revenue stream.

It’s always there, even if it’s paused, taking up mental storage. I say if you’re not passionate about it, pivot or drop it and focus on what is working.

Talk to me!

What are you going to do with your business for 2014? Are you not being fair to yourself or one of your products? Tell us in the comments and let’s see if we can help.

By the way, I wrote about being a mentor and there’s a good turn out going on in the comments. Check it out!

]]>https://mattreport.com/business-2014/feed/5WordPress through Google Glasshttps://mattreport.com/wordpress-google-glass/
https://mattreport.com/wordpress-google-glass/#commentsThu, 12 Dec 2013 20:28:04 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3108I’m really excited to sit down and chat with the developer of wpForGlass, a WordPress plugin for publishing via Google Glass.

When the news broke, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Who is Ozzy Farman and this agency Weber Shandwick?”

Why is that important? In my humble opinion, this type of plugin is forward thinking. We’re not talking about another social share plugin or can someone theme the admin better — this is the practice of fusing two great technologies together for the enhancement of publishing.

Why didn’t innovation like this come from one of the “well known” WordPress agencies? Should it have? We’ll learn about that and more in episode 57!

Interview with Ozzy Farman of Weber Shandwick

Video quality isn’t that good while recording via a hangout

Listen to the audio version

Publishing with WordPress

This isn’t the only foray into fusing technologies with WordPress. John Saddington is doing this with photography and his iOS app Pressgram.

I still feel that we’ve yet to really harness the potential of using WordPress as a publishing platform for individuals and large media organizations alike. WordPress is poised to be the central hub for an individual’s social publishing — not Facebook, not Twitter — your WordPress blog.

You own the data, the traffic and you call the shots. Look for innovative plugins like this to heighten this experience over the next year.

The Business of big agency

This wouldn’t be a Matt Report episode without talking business.

Ozzy shares some insight into the 300 person PR agency(there’s 300+ in the NY office) Weber Shandwick, that fronted this open source plugin development. I did some research before the show and their landing some rather large deals. With deals reaching intp the multi-millions, Ozzy explains how we should position our own sales pitch. Some great advice for us to elevate from the $500, $5000, and into the $50,000 projects.

Takeaway: Telling a story

You know what is great about WordPress? It allows us to tell a story.

We can draft short posts, long form content, or publish a podcast. Now, with Google Glass integration, telling a story becomes easier than ever. Ozzy views the investment in this technology as paying it forward for future client relations. You might not be able to walk into a Best Buy and pickup a Google Glass today, but you can be assured that when your media team is looking for an agency to deploy 100’s of them for a big media push — Ozzy will get the call.

Welcome to the community

Welcome to the community Ozzy!

I mentioned that his agency isn’t one of those we normally hear of in the halls of a WordCamp — at least, I haven’t.

So when he announced his project on Github, he was really surprised to find that WordPress folks were helping him out and guiding him to do it the “WordPress way.” It was great to get that first person perspective on our little community.

]]>https://mattreport.com/wordpress-google-glass/feed/2Become a mentorhttps://mattreport.com/become-a-mentor/
https://mattreport.com/become-a-mentor/#commentsTue, 10 Dec 2013 16:23:28 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3100The holiday season is upon us and it’s time to give thanks to folks near and far.

For the last 5 years I’ve been volunteering as a mentor for my local community college. Recently, I was a guest speaker to a 101 programming course and I talked about the importance of developing a brand/portfolio as soon as possible. Over the years the talk has evolved from chatting about soft skills I look for in a team member to the latest, running a WordPress business.

It’s important to me that I give back to a school that taught me a lot about caring for an individual and not just the grade on a paper.

Finding someone to invest in

I have to remember that a majority of these 18 and 19 year old students might not have the focus of a seasoned entrepreneur– yet.

Every new semester I receive a fresh set of kids to mentor. Some are super responsive and others I never hear from. The students I do talk to, seemingly have the drive and passion to go far with their career. While each person might posses this desire, it’s up to them to execute on it.

Two guys make a game

I’ll always ask the class if anyone is currently freelancing. Selfishly, I want to know who I might be able to bring on to the team and to the same point it tells me who is willing to do the hard work.

This time the answer was different, one of my mentees said he was developing a game for Android. Another student raises his hand and states he’s trying to the same thing. Magic!

Immediately I tell them to connect and work on “version 1.0″ of the game together. Being a solopreneur is noteasy.

Next step, find a neutral 3rd party mentor to advise on the progress. Personally, I’ve had partnerships crumble and have witnessed other partnership’s devastate lives — get a neutral party in there ASAP.

That mentor is me

I talked to them after class and told them to contact me when they have a basic plan together. I haven’t warned them about anything yet — like the fact making the game will not be the hardest part — but I will once they reach out to me.

I don’t know if they will take advantage of my time, I’m leaving that up to them. I will not pursue them or check in on their progress. It’s up to them.

My role as a mentor is not to jump start passion and pursuit — that’s the entrepreneur’s journey.

I’m excited to see if they follow through with this idea.

Become a mentor

The WordPress community is ripe with young startups, developers, designers and business folk.

Folks that I coach often become great friends and it’s wonderful to see their dreams become reality. My hope with this site and events like the WordPress Startup Challenge do just that — we’re introducing young startups to the rest of the world.

In fact I know that Challenge runner-up WP Stagecoach is looking for pricing advice, can you help?

Is there someone you can mentor for the next 30 days? Someone to help see their 2014 resolutions come true? Let’s see if we can drum up some connections on this post.

If you’re up for being a mentor, post your contact info below and connect with someone today!

]]>https://mattreport.com/become-a-mentor/feed/24How to start a podcasthttps://mattreport.com/start-podcast/
https://mattreport.com/start-podcast/#commentsMon, 09 Dec 2013 17:58:54 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3084This weekend I took part in an Olympian event called WordSesh.

I loaded up Google Hangouts to join the discussion with six other hosts that also run their own WordPress podcast. We chatted about why we do what we do and what lead us to make this part of our routine.

Folks in the live chat were asking questions about the equipment and software we were using to produce our content. So here’s a list of software, hardware and advice for taking your show from the cutting room floor to the airwaves.

The best podcasting microphones

Without a doubt, this is the #1 question I get on Twitter and via e-mail.

I’ve read a lot of reviews, watched a lot of YouTube videos and listened to countless hosts explain their reasoning. There’s plenty of mics out there, so do your research and pick whichever works within your budget. I own all of these mics listed below and they serve their individual purpose. (Disclosure: Amazon affiliate links)

The Logitech C615 – $50

By far the most affordable solution for doing low budget audio and video.

This little USB webcam helped kick off my career in podcasting and video interviews. The biggest shocker of this little baby is the microphone. It does surprisingly well even from 3 feet away. It’s going to pickup a lot of loud ambient noise in your room, so be sure to be as quiet as possible.

Pro: Super affordable for combined video and audio.

Con: If you’re going to do a lot of podcasting I’d invest in a better mic.

Blue Yeti – $100

The Yeti sits at the sweet spot of 100 bucks. It’s the go to mic I recommend for anyone ready jump into full time podcasting. It’s not that expensive compared to others and it serves as a great backup mic if you ever need it. I also found it’s great to travel with if you want to get your remote podcasting on.

Pro: Best bang for your buck when looking for a dedicated mic.

Con: Audio quality won’t capture all the mids and lows of a higher end mic.

Rode Podcaster w/ Boom and shock mount – $350

If you’re going to get the mic, you’re going to need the complete setup of the boom arm and shockmount. Trust me, it will make your life that much better. It hooks on to my desk with ease and I can move it around as I move around in my chair. Great for podcasting and screen recording.

Heil PR-40 – $330 (mic only)

And this is the Porsche of mics. A solid build, great looking and awesome sound quality. Combine this with a mixer (because you need to) and you can tune every range of your vocals.

Pro: Awesome sound.

Con: Expensive.

Podcasting Software

Here’s some of the software I’m using to create and publish our shows:

Creating

Garageband: The defacto audio editor for Mac. I’m not a fan to be honest with you.

ScreenFlow: ($99) This is by far my favorite audio+video editing software I use on the Mac. It’s certainly not an over complicated app and gets the job done for basic podcasts all the way to walk through screen recordings.

E-Camm Call Recorder: ($20) I use this gem to capture and record audio and video via Skype. This is my go to app for the Matt Report podcast.

Google Hangouts: (Free) No surprise that Google is crushing it with Hangouts. You can have private sessions or broadcast live to the world right from your YouTube account. Amazing.

Skype:(Free*) Fairly straight forward. Combine this with E-camm call recorder to get the job done.

Hosting

Amazon S3: I host all of my mp3’s and video here. Each link will be served up to the proper streaming services.

Zoom H4N – $230

This is a great hand held recording device that I take with me to conferences. It actually has 2 XLR inputs so you could plugin your Heil’s right to the device and hit record. Audio is stored on an SD card and operates off of 4 AA batteries.

Pro: Compact with great audio recording.

Con: Expensive.

Starting your podcast

The greatest piece of advice I can offer: just hit record.

Sounds cliche I know — but that’s the best thing you can do. Don’t sit there spinning your wheels asking yourself if people will listen or not. Grab a mic, hit record, spill out your thoughts and post it to your blog.

The longer you wait, the more disinterested you might become. So stop hiding behind text and tweets — jump into creating your new age media today!

]]>https://mattreport.com/start-podcast/feed/9WordSesh the WordPress Olympicshttps://mattreport.com/wordsesh-wordpress-olympics/
https://mattreport.com/wordsesh-wordpress-olympics/#commentsSat, 07 Dec 2013 16:51:51 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3075For the first time in my life, I might have the podcasting jitters.

For those of you that don’t know, the 24 hour marathon of WordPress “stuff” kicked off Friday evening (EST time.) This Olympian event hosts a cast of WordPress professionals, developers, designers, founders, characters and a perfect mix of personalities — including yours truly.

Every hour for 24 hours, you’re consuming gobs of information like running a WordPress plugin business to designing better websites. All for free.

The Olympians

I see it like we’re all gathered to represent our own little WordPress “country” if not our own niche in the WordPress world.

So how do you become a WordPress Olympian?

Well that’s what makes WordPress so darn great — there’s plenty of ways to get involved. From documentation to becoming a developer, you can give back in the way you feel comfortable. In fact, you’re giving back by using WordPress in your business or by spreading the good gospel of the software on a daily basis.

Just starting out? No worries, dive into the support forums. 5 Year veteran? Help someone get started.

My way of giving back

My little contribution to WordPress is this very podcast, advocating the use of WordPress and demonstrating how it can help you succeed.

This is just the beginning of the talent involved in today’s marathon. 24 hours only affords us a sample size of the awesome people in our community.

I’m not a WordPress geek — why do I care?

I know that some of you in my audience are not interested in the community side of WordPress. You use WordPress as a tool and focus on other areas of your business.

And that’s OK — that’s why I do what I do.

But, I want you to take a moment and thank the people helping power the foundation of your online business or e-commerce site. Sure you could have picked another piece of software, but would you have been as successful?

Would you have found the support you needed or the plugin that helped rank you on page 1 of Google?

Would the overhead have been as low as it is on the web’s #1 content management system?

The WordPress community is like none other that I’ve experienced and it’s all for the sake of helping each other. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to achieve what we have in the last 10 years.

]]>https://mattreport.com/wordsesh-wordpress-olympics/feed/3What entrepreneurs don’t like to admithttps://mattreport.com/what-entrepreneurs-dont-like-to-admit/
https://mattreport.com/what-entrepreneurs-dont-like-to-admit/#commentsFri, 06 Dec 2013 17:25:23 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3068The hardest part of our work is not the making money part — it’s the focus part.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s the execution that matters.

It’s so easy right? Then you realize there’s the entrepreneurial bug that drove us here in the first place. There’s something inside us that constantly wants us to create.

Well that’s great, until it’s not. Here’s why…

Chasing shiny objects

I had 5 calls this week with hopeful entrepreneurs.

They pitched me their idea, showed me their “design” and how their million dollar idea would change the lives of thousands. I was happy to see that all of them had the passion to embark on this journey. Elated to launch their product to the proverbial shelves they couldn’t stop talking about all of the awesome new features they were planning. You wouldn’t be wrong by admitting it’s an amazing time to build something.

But that’s just it, we’re obsessed with building.

It’s what we do. It’s in our DNA.

We see these features as shiny objects and we chase them. “Ah that’s awesome!” you might think. You start searching Google for what already exists, excited to only find 1.7m results for the keyword.

“I’ve got this!” — you start creating.

Ideas, sketches, flow charts and the occasional prototype. You need to get that MVP out the door before the next gal does. All the while you’re leaving your existing product behind. You’re no longer staying true to it’s mission and the purpose it serves.

You’re not being fair.

The last mile is the hardest

If you hired me to consult with you, I’d tell you this time and time again. The last mile is the hardest.

[Tweet “The last mile is the hardest.”]

The first 90% is easy:

Define the market

Solve the problem

Ask yourself, “Am I passionate about this?”

Build your prototype

Market & promotion

Test

And then that last 10% comes into play. You get bored, you want to create again!

Now is the time to be disciplined.

This is the hard work and this defines the entrepreneur.

Can you stay focused to see the product through or are you going to chase more shiny objects?

]]>https://mattreport.com/what-entrepreneurs-dont-like-to-admit/feed/68 Tools for the (almost) daily bloggerhttps://mattreport.com/8-tools-almost-daily-blogger/
https://mattreport.com/8-tools-almost-daily-blogger/#commentsThu, 05 Dec 2013 20:53:35 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3050Daily blogging is a feat I wish to accomplish at some consecutive rate in the near future.

Even a 90 day stretch would feel great because I don’t think I’ll ever get a solid 365 days in like my pals Chris Lema and Tom McFarlin.

So why would one want to blog every day anyway? Here’s a few reasons:

Therapeutic

Building an audience

Sharing knowledge

Nurturing leads

The list could go on, but that’s what I hear from most folks that I’m consulting. A daily blogging ritual is an absolute necessity. Be it in your head, on paper or in the cloud you need some tools to keep you on track.

Tools & apps for the daily blogger

By no means am I a daily blogger — I’m just striving to fly at that altitude.

Here’s a collection of tools and apps I use to keep me fighting the good fight.

1. Wunderlist

I live and die by this app. It’s cross platform, which means I can bring it to my Macbook Air, my Windows PC, and my Android phone without worry. It even has a a cloud based app which syncs across all of these devices which comes in handy if I’m working on one of our iMacs at the studio.

I have a list just for blogging topics that I capture right when the idea enters my mind. The great thing with Wunderlist is I can then leave notes about the “to-do” to expand a bit more if I need to.

2. Simplenote

I’m relatively new to using this app and my only gripe is there’s no native Windows client. Yes I use Windows at home — I actually think Win 7 is a solid OS. Moving on…

Surprise — I’m enjoying the simplicity of this app. The other day I was able to draft Episode 56: 24 ways to build a better WordPress site while I was on the bike at the gym. I did this using my Android phone, came home sync’d it with my Mac and posted it to WordPress.

Lovely.

3. Evernote

I’ll be honest, I’ve been using this less and less as Evernote has become a bit more bloated. I say that with the utmost respect to the software because I still think it’s a feature rich app with a rather “tuned” experience.

I do use it for archiving assets like articles, photos and links. Certainly useful when I’m gathering for long form posts or extended research.

4. Moleskine

That’s right, every now and again I just need to sketch it out on paper.

I carry one with me wherever I go and it has a WordPress sticker on it. Notes, drawings, doodles and meeting notes. All go here. When they fill up, I file them and eventually go back to see some of the great ideas I came up with that I never executed.

6. Skitch

Skitch has had it’s ups and downs over the last year, but I think it’s finally coming to grips with the new owner Evernote.

One massive gripe I have with the app is the URL it uses to share screenshots. It’s horrendous. Why they haven’t syncd up with a URL shortening service is beyond me. So if you’re down with sharing 400 character URL’s, you won’t be disappointed. Other than that, this is my go to screenshot app that allows me to block out, draw arrows and add text to any image on my screen.

7. Buffer App

All of this fantastic content publishing is useless without proper promotion.

I leverage timed tweets, Facebook posts and G+ shares via Buffer. When I make a new post, I’ll schedule it out for promotion for the next 24 hours, week and even month. Super useful to set your promotions on auto pilot. Just don’t spam or be *that* person.

8. Socialize WordPress theme

Seriously, the theme won’t make you a better writer or more consistent, but it’s gonna make you look damn good doing it. In my opinion, you want your posts to have clean and clear definition. Socialize is styled to do just that on any sized browser or device. Give it a go and I’ll even give you $10 bucks off using promo code: THANKS10 at checkout.

And that’s a wrap!

So as I stride to become a daily blogger, these are the tools I’m using to get the job done.

]]>https://mattreport.com/8-tools-almost-daily-blogger/feed/424 Ways you can build a better WordPress websitehttps://mattreport.com/build-great-wordpress-website/
https://mattreport.com/build-great-wordpress-website/#commentsWed, 04 Dec 2013 02:27:13 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3042Sometimes I should learn to keep my mouth shut. But if I did, we wouldn’t get awesome interviews like this one with James Schramko of superfastbusiness.com.

I was listening to James interview on another podcast and he lead in to how easy it is to launch a WordPress website. Even more so, how fast andcheap it is.

Call it passion or call it crazy – but I called him out on why folks launching their new website shouldn’t just skimp out because they can.

Long story short, he contacted me and this episode was born. Join us to discuss the steps it takes to build a great WordPress website!

How to build a great WordPress website with James Schramko

I like to think that these sort of lists are subjective to the type of website you’re building. In your case, you might focus more on the pure design aspects of the site or the mobile usability.

Either way, I hope you find this list and collection of links useful for your WordPress business — or even more important — your customer’s.

Speed

Speed is an important factor across the board. It will improve our bounce rate and help mobile networks tolerate the access to your content.

Usability

When a visitor lands on our site are they able to use it properly? I don’t just mean they can scroll or links work (though do make sure that is possible!) but that they can find the content and resources they intend to.

We need them to take action because that’s how we measure the success of our efforts.

Mobile

If you don’t have a mobile accessible site you could be losing out on revenue. God forbid you’re a restaurant or brick and mortar store surviving on foot traffic. Luckily WordPress makes this easy — but not too easy, right James?

Value proposition

So many sites have become “owner” focused — we do this, we won that, we’re awesome.

You forgot about one thing — the customer! What’s in it for your them or the visitor to your blog? Make sure you’re properly addressing what it is your content solves or the pain point your product aides with.

I don’t have any plugins or services for this area. The great thing is, you can keep fine tuning that value prop over time!

Call to actions

This could fall under usability, but call to action or CTA can come in many shapes and sizes. It could be a burning red button at the top of your header or after a post. IT could come in the form of a pop-up or in between the content of your latest post.

Got more actionable advice?

I’d love to hear it! Leave your tip in the comments below. How do you build the perfect WordPress website?

]]>https://mattreport.com/build-great-wordpress-website/feed/6Invest in your first 100 customershttps://mattreport.com/first-100-customers/
https://mattreport.com/first-100-customers/#commentsSun, 01 Dec 2013 20:54:13 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=3035Data — It’s what I love to hate as a web marketer and consultant.

Data tells us who our customers are, where they come from and how long they spend looking at our content. What device they use, what pages they click on and how many videos they watch. There’s the free kind of data and then there’s the data we pay for.

Forget your Google Analytics for a minute

I was on a consulting call last week where we were exploring the idea of A/B testing landing pages.

“Maybe we should try a different headline or a different color blue?”

Well let’s take a look at the real issue.

The product has only been on the market for about 90 days and the website is barely in the 4 digits of monthly traffic since the launch. There’s not enough traffic to properly run a solid A/B test campaign so why are we talking about it?

Because we’re taught to execute on these formulas. If you can “optimize” a page, you will earn a higher conversion rate.

Well what about optimizing your product and service first? Let’s take a step back and talk with our customers to find out why they bought from versus us guessing what our call to actions should be.

If you’re already making sales

I don’t think A/B testing is wrong, it just might not be right for where you are in your business cycle.

So if you’ve made a handful of sales of your product or service — guess what — it’s time to pick up the phone. You need to reach out and talk to your existing customers to find out why they purchased from you. What made them trust you enough to open up their wallets and hand over their hard earned cash?

Luckily, it’s 2013 and there are many ways we can use this proverbial phone:

Record a Skype session - It’s not enough to just have the phone call, you have to ask your customer if you can record it. These early stage discovery sessions are a gold mine of information that will help shape your business for the next few months. Recording will allow you to go back and review or even share it with other members of your team. You can use E-camm if you’re on a Mac. It’s what I use to record my podcast.

Screenshare on Google Hangout – Google Hangout is becoming a killer app and it’s a great way to see how a client interacts with your product. You might discover a new use case or realize they aren’t using the product the right way to begin with.

Follow up e-mails/survey – After the sale, you should have a cycle of e-mails that go out to follow up. What app do you use? Your calendar. That’s right, if you’re still at only a handful of customers a month you don’t need a marketing platform — you just need to schedule it and reach out to your customer. No templates or scripted dialogues, just write them a simple e-mail to find out how they are doing and if you can help.

Your own pipeline with Trello - Use a list building app like Trello to manage and create your own funnel of this process. Make the customer a card and drag and drop them along lists that represent different stages. I use it for my contact forms and it’s amazing.

If you’re not making sales

You need more eyeballs.

I don’t care how you do it, but you need to get one person using it. Hell, give it to them for free and enter into a free consultation to help them set it up. This interaction will be invaluable.

Danger: I’m not saying you fork your product per each unique request, but look for the pain points they are pointing to. You have the choice to use it in your marketing or to make it part of the feature/function for upcoming releases.

When I talk to people about launching their business, there’s always friction within this first step.

They feel embarrassed or think that these people aren’t the right audience. Guess what? If you can’t convince someone in your elevator pitch or 2 minute demonstration, we’re going to have serious problems moving forward.

Furthermore, you need to practice dumbing down your value proposition. Technical folks might get the jargon, but if it’s making them stop and think about benefits, chances are their going to move right past it.

Invest more in your first 100 customers and your next 1000 will love you for it.

I connect my general Contact form and my Challenge application forms to my Trello account with Zapier.

I use Trello for organizing thoughts and tasks, so why not use it to organize all of the folks contacting me. With it’s ease of use and drag-n-drop lists, it makes for a really great lightweight CRM of sorts.

For those of you that haven’t used any of these services, let’s take a look at what they do before I share the recipe.

Gravity Forms

If you’ve spent any time in the WordPress space, you’ve probably heard of Gravity Forms.

It’s the most regarded contact form system, positioned as much more than just a simple contact form plugin. With it’s great collection of add-ons, specifically this Zapier add-on integration we’re covering today, it’s proven that we can do a lot with capturing data on our WordPress site.

Zapier

Zapier makes it easy for you to make web apps talk to one another. In this case, Gravity tells Zapier when a form is submitted and then Zapier tells Trello. There’s a boat load of services you can trigger based on actions and I’m only really scratching the surface here.

Theres a free account, so sign up and play around with it. If you’re like me, your braincell’s are going to start firing off when you think about what it can do for you or your clients.

Trello

Lived it, breathed it, and paid $100 a month for it. Then I met Trello and never went back and migrated everything over to the service.

I plan on writing more about how we use Trello at Slocum Studio because I can hear the 37Signals diehards now. I didn’t shift over just because it’s free, but because it’s super clean, intuitive and real time. That last part is super important and we’ll talk more about it later.

You organize your project on a board, then create lists within the board. Lists contain cards, which contain all the data you want in it. Sub lists, files, conversations, link to Dropbox etc. Really quite amazing.

Connecting the 3 services

Install Zapier add-on

First, you will have to grab your Zapier add-on and install it under your Gravity Forms settings page.

Once this is enabled, each Gravity Form will have a Zapier webhook that you need to enter under settings. You’re going to need to copy and paste this webhook here once you get into Zapier.

Note: You will need the Developer level license of Gravity in order to access this Zapier add-on. For most folks it’s worth it if you’re installing a lot of forms.

Configure Zapier

Take a look at that screenshot — fairly obvious what’s going on here right?

When a Gravity Forms is submitted, we will trigger a Trello Card creation. Simple.

I’m going to skip ahead to one of my completed zaps so you can see how I structure the passing of data. It’s amazing what you can tap into here, so spend a few minutes playing around and thinking about the opportunity.

Here’s what this is doing:

When a submission comes from my Gravity Forms “Contact Form Submissions”

Shoot it over to my Trello list “Incoming”

Labeled with the card title of “Name” which is the name field of my form

Now spit the data fields Email Topic Website and the comment into the card

The end result

Here’s a view of what my November looks like.

Everything flows into “Incoming Contact” and then I drag and drop them into their respective lists. I delete the cards I don’t need to keep or come through as spam and archive the cards that have sent me suggestions.

So here’s where you can see the magic begin to happen or even start to use Trello as a simple CRM system for your own business. I can move cards around to their different status positions which helps a ton when I’m organizing the Challenge which is a logistics nightmare.

Eventually I need to upgrade my Helpscout account to premium in order to enable API access. I use Helpscout for managing all my responses for this site which is great for my consulting side of the house.

Pricing — The plugin will be free for anyone to download and use on their own server. Additionally, a free web service is coming soon that will offer premium add-ons, much like the WordPress.com model.

2. What was your “aha!” moment for building the product?

Roughly 6 months ago, I was working on redesigning my personal website and recalled having been impressed by some of the presentations from various WordCamps during the year. My thought was to use one of those JS libraries to add some aesthetically pleasing motion and transitions to my website. The project started out as a theme based on Automattic’s “_s” with the intention of acting as a homepage. A few months later, my employer is asking if I would be interested in giving a presentation at Boston PHP. That’s when it hit me; I had the groundwork already laid. By witnessing the painstaking amount of time it took some of my co-workers to put slides together using HTML, I knew there had to be an better way.

3. Do you have a potential business model for the plugin? License, recurring, SaaS?

I’ve always been drawn to the SaaS model. In fact, I really like the way that WordPress.com does it, and I’m leaning towards implenting a very similar model. By releasing the core product as open source, WP Present is more likely to get adopted by fellow developers and designers who in turn may contribute back to the project. In addition to the free plugin, I will also be offering a free web service where users can come and create slide presentations without having to run their own instances of WordPress. This service will offer various paid upgrades such as PDF export, themes, custom branding, etc.

4. Why this market? It seems that it could be super competitive with big players like a shared Google presentation, SlideShare.net etc

My plan has never been to disrupt Google presentation or SlideShare. Once the product is out of beta, it should become more obvious as to how I intend to market and differentiate the product from the tech behemoths. I have a very specific audience that I am looking to target, and I am hoping to capture the majority of attention on that front. Until then, I think I’ll hold my cards close to my chest.

5. Speaking of competition, what do you think of Jake’s (10up) plugin called seoslides.com?

This is somewhat of a funny story. I had asked Jake a few months ago about a “product” he alluded to during his panel at WordCamp San Francisco. At the time, he was pretty guarded. Fast forward to the end of October and just 24 hours before the beginning of WordCamp Boston, I unexpectedly discovered 10up’s new product was also a slide presentation plugin. I didn’t even have a chance to check it out until after I had introduced WP Present the following day. Let’s just say I think we have each other’s attention.

Now that the conference is over, I’ve had the opportunity to take a look at seoslides. The first thing that I noticed were some very obvious similarities to WP Present. Jake and I both come from the same quadrant of the WordPress community. We are both developers at the core and have spent extensive time working with the WordPress.com VIP team. As a result, we’ve both crafted our products the “WordPress.com” way, which mandates a strict set of quality guidelines and best practices. We have even used a few of the same icons, layouts, and wording in certain parts of our products.

However, appearances aside, there are some fundamental differences between WP Present and seoslides. In the creation of seoslides, the team at 10up has adopted a third party editor in combination with custom templates using HTML Canvas — a very impressive feat. I have taken a different approach with WP Present and have chosen to stick with WordPress’s native TinyMCE editor. TinyMCE is notoriously difficult to work with, however, using it means that WP Present is compatible with existing WordPress plugins. WP Present also allows slides to exist on 2 axes, as opposed to the traditional left and right layout, and it has more elaborate transition effects. On the other hand, seoslides appears to have more of a focus on cross-browser compatibility, which in my opinion hints towards the intended audience. Ultimately, I believe user adoption is going to come down to personal preference and the specifics of the task at hand.

6. What’s your biggest challenge right now and how do you expect to overcome it?

Without a second thought, the answer is marketing and funding. I’m bootstrapping this thing — working on it nights and weekends, outside of my day job, and with zero capital. I am hoping that by releasing the core software as open source that I will attract a few great designers and developers than can help push the project forward.

7. What potential do you see within the WordPress entrepreneurship ecosystem?

The WordPress ecosystem is massive and growing. With WordPress powering roughly 20% of the web, there are ample opportunities to explore as an entrepreneur. The trend has been moving from creating for the general to the specific, and I am not expecting this to change in the foreseeable future. We will see an increasing number of niche implementations utilizing WordPress, targeted at accomplishing much more specific tasks. I also believe there is an overwhelming opportunity for success with WordPress in the mobile market. The most difficult task is figuring out which path you want to take with your available resources.

8. If you had to do it all over again — would you pick the same path?

It is way too early to tell; ask me again in 6 months. As of right now, I have no regrets, and I am feeling very optimistic.

]]>https://mattreport.com/wppresent-interview/feed/0How to write your first self published e-bookhttps://mattreport.com/how-to-write-your-first-self-published-e-book/
https://mattreport.com/how-to-write-your-first-self-published-e-book/#commentsThu, 21 Nov 2013 14:24:04 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=2999Am I the only one that has an urge to start writing a book when the winter time rolls around?

Episode 55: Brian Casel & Design for Conversions

There’s a long road ahead

Brian set out with a very rigid scheduled — then chopped it by 2 months.

When he looked at the project from a 30-thousand foot view, he was a bit overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t be when all you see is a blank canvas needing to be filled with all of your thoughts.

But what did he attribute his success to?

1. Blogging

Brian has been bogging for some time now. If he wasn’t already producing content regualrly, this book writing task probably would have been a touch harder. On the flip side, guest blogging also helped him find success with marketing the book.

So get your blog on already!

2. Planning

Planning every step of the way. Admittedly this is my weakest point. He sat down and formulated a strong plan and mapped out milestones for himself. Along the way, he crossed off these accomplishments which became great motivating points. He drilled down to the day, which I don’t think I could do, but certainly on a weekly or monthly basis. How would you plan your book?

3. Hard work

There’s no other way around it. This is going to be hard work.

We chatted about the days that he had to sit down and just write. Mentally exhausted from the day or just not in the mood, he still stuck through it and pounded through the hard turns. I’ve heard this from a lot of authors out there and it’s quite a challenge that I’m wondering if I could live up to.

There’s a whole heck of a lot more in the interview so be sure to tune in.

A special offer for you

Brian is giving you 20% off any book plan you purchase. You must use the special link and the coupon code below. Because of this nice gesture, I’m giving you $10 bucks off the Socialize theme that powers this site! Both offers are good for 1 week only.

I attended Steven Word’s talk called “Unconventional WordPress” and unconventional it was. At the end of the talk he unveiled the plugin that powered his presentation WP Present. Later in the day Jake Goldman presented his topic and also unveiled his company’s first dance with product – seoslides.

How about that? Two presentation slide plugins built for WordPress unbeknownst to one another in the same building.

So is this what 10up’s been doing with all that talent? If you’re like me, you might be wondering when their product might be launching to the world. Well not so fast. We learn here that this is an investment by 10up’s founder and we should expect to see original product incubated by the team early 2014.

Read on to discover more about seoslides and the future of 10up’s product line.

WordPress presentation slide plugins are all the rage

(My interview with Steven will follow this post with his answers to similar questions.)

You mentioned some ownership in the plugin/service. Could you expand on it a bit more? Is this a 10up investment, collaborative project or otherwise?

In short, 10up is heavily invested in seoslides, both through the real blood, sweat, and tears we’ve poured into the product and fiscally. We have real skin in that game.

seoslides is owned by a company called Alorum, which was founded by two highly qualified entrepreneurs living in Florida, Daniel Scott and Chris Kluis. I clicked with them both in early conversations – they understand WordPress, respected our “open” (GPL) values, and had realistic expectations.

Daniel and Scott own a majority stake in the company; its first product is seoslides. I’m the largest share holder and investor behind those two. My investment is on behalf of 10up, which I wholly own, but due to boring tax and SEC regulations, I’m considered the investor (you can look up Alorum’s SEC filing if you want to know more).

All of the engineering and technical support – and most of the other digital agency services – are being executed by 10up as part of our agreement, albeit at an aggressive, startup pace and budget.

In short, 10up is heavily invested in seoslides, both through the real blood, sweat, and tears we’ve poured into the product and fiscally. We have real skin in that game.

Are you going to be involved with more product or investments in the WP ecosystem?

In short: yes.

seoslides continues to be a huge undertaking. We’ve built a drag-and-drop slide editor, SaaS infrastructure for importing and processing slides, performant SaaS authentication, and technology that makes embedding self hosted slides on an external site as easy as dropping in a YouTube clip. And that’s just what we’ve released. Having experienced partners and other investors was the right choice for our first product investment.

10up also has some really exciting products in our internal pipeline, which are wholly owned by us, the first of which will roll out no later than Q1 2014.

10up also has some really exciting products in our internal pipeline, which are wholly owned by us, the first of which will roll out no later than Q1 2014. Our team is chomping at the bit to share these with the world.

I won’t tell you what we’re building, but I will tell you that we’re interested in solving unaddressed problems. I have no doubt that our team could release the best solution to any website technology problem, but I’m not interested in releasing generic e-commerce, membership, or form plug-in #6.

When you put the best designers, the best JavaScript engineers, the best user interface engineers, and the best software engineers together, something special happens. You look at some of the creative flourishes in an upcoming product and you know this would never have been possible without very smart, but very different minds coming together.

Have you been successful with the freemium model? Feel free to expand.

It’s hard to define success when the product has barely been on the market 1 month, with the beta label on top of the premium services. Anyone that sets a goal for “success” in a market like this one and expects to be there in less than 1 year is, I think, either the inventor of the iPhone (actually, it wasn’t really a success until its second model either) or in for a rude awakening.

I will tell you that we’ve seen a slow but healthy number of “free key” sign ups, and over 700 downloads in just over 1 month. I doubt we would have had more premium customers than we have today had we dropped the free version. And if our premium pricing wasn’t obvious enough, we’re heavily focused on growing the free signups during our early days.

seoslides’ long term strategy is built on a belief in the power of platforms, SaaS, and the local plug-in code itself being completely free and open.

Why this market? It seems that it could be super competitive with big players like a shared Google presentation, SlideShare.net etc

You’re asking that because we need to do a much better job of explaining what seoslides solves. Our goal is not to build the best slide maker – our team won’t compete with Apple’s web based Keynote or Google’s presentation maker.

Our goal is to democratize and free ownership of this content in the same sense that WordPress democratized ownership of website content. Fundamentally, WordPress’s value proposition is: do you want to own your content, or do you want a third service party to own it? And: do you want to be able to open up and extend what this kind of software can do for you?

When you post your deck on SlideShare, they own that content. The conversation about your content? Owned by SlideShare. Origin links when third parties embed your slideshow on their site? SlideShare. Analytic data about your slideshow’s performance? Well, you can buy it from SlideShare.

Our goal is to democratize and free ownership of this content in the same sense that WordPress democratized ownership of website content.

When you host your slideshow with seoslides, you own all of the content, on your server. When third parties embed your deck (super easy with seoslides), the back links go to your site. Both the deck and each slide have their own URLs, fully trackable with a standard analytic package. All of the content, from entered speaker notes to slide titles are indexable on your site, just like regular blog post content. seoslides the company goes away? We change our business model? You still have the plug-in and content, safe and secure on your own website.

Before WordPress, there were services that made it reasonably easy to host your website – on their platform and subject to their terms. Remember what happened to GeoCities?

The parallels are deeper than you think. In the days of GeoCities and expensively licensed commercial CMS platforms, professional web developers (if you can call late 90’s “webmasters” that) still had the skill to build and host their own solution. Today, you see plenty of web developers building slideshows that they host on their own site using fancy frameworks that mandate technical sophistication, even if it is just tagging.

I think the web is ready for something with the ease of SlideShare combined with the freedoms of WordPress.

Steven is a smart cookie, and a friend of mine. Hilariously, we had a conversation before WordCamp Boston about innovation within WordPress and awkwardly discovered we were both circling the presentations space. I’ve been excited and inspired to play with his plug-in – and motivated by it!

@stevenkword

Steven is really addressing a different problem space. In fact, I can imagine his solution plugging into our solution, if he sticks with it. Steven is trying to solve slideshow creation in WordPress. As I suggested above, that’s not really our problem space. For us, our editor is like Mac OS X shipping with TextEdit or Windows shipping with WordPad – you have to have something “elegant enough” for those with basic needs.

We don’t think WordPress is likely to ever be a serious substitute for a tool like Keynote any time soon, or even alternative web-based tools that are focusing purely on creation. We’re focused on consumption and distribution.

Yes, WP-Present also hosts your content – but it requires you to create it (or recreate it) within WordPress. That’s the easy part of a project like this, because there are so many open source tools to start with, and WordPress’s content platform architecture is well situated for this. The hard part is infrastructure and partnerships that enable the masses creating slideshows in first class tools to host them on their own website while facilitating distribution to other sites. That’s the problem space we’re focusing on.

You see that in import tools, which you’ll se a lot more of. You see that in how ridiculously easy it is for third party sites to embed your slideshows. You see it in the super intuitive “embed slideshow” button right in the visual editor toolbar, enabling publishers to drop slideshows into any page or post. Steven’s plug-in has a different focus, so not surprisingly, it offers none of these, while successfully innovating in the creation space.

Steven’s choice to use reveal.js as the underlying engine also speaks to this plug-in being more of an experiment and curiosity, than a broadly supported solution. We evaluated reveal.js as the underlying delivery platform for seoslides, but rejected it partly because we found its bi-directional navigation confusing outside of the geek niche, and mostly because it lacks support for browsers like IE9 that still consume serious market share. We instead went with shower.js (http://shwr.me) (Jake:We ended up using Deck.js as the underlying engine, and are in communication with their lead engineer) as our underlying presentation engine. We’re in communication with its lead developer, and plan to contribute back to Shower and integrate Shower improvements. This is what a long term product strategy looks like.

I hope Steven’s plug-in succeeds, too. I hope we can collaborate with him. We very much see the “slide making” layer within seoslides as pluggable, whether it be through integration with popular slideshow software, or alternative WordPress plug-ins. Perhaps its future is an alternative administrative layer for our distribution and import engine!

What’s your biggest challenge right now and how do you expect to overcome it?

Like most software packages, our biggest challenges are marketing and technical.

I personally think the biggest challenges are technical, but maybe that’s my software engineering roots showing. Making seoslides a trusted, SEO optimized delivery and distribution platform for slideshows created in all sorts of places in all different formats (Keynote, PowerPoint, Google presentations, etc etc) is no small feat.

We also need to do a much better job of telling our product story, and marketing it. We wanted to get something out the door as soon as we thought we could, and always anticipated that marketing would follow that. And it will.

What potential do you see within the WordPress entrepreneurship ecosystem?

Good question.

Although I define 10up as an online publishing and content management agency first, and a “WordPress shop” second, it’s clear that our laser focus on the platform has paid immense dividends. Clearly, I think we’re evidence that opportunity within the agency space is extremely rich, and with some smarter thinking on the part of firms like ours, has a long way to grow (expect me to opine on this on my blog).

I’ll be honest: I’m less clear on the “WordPress product” space, although we’re clearly betting on it. Start by narrowing the global market to those that manage a website, than those that use WordPress, than those have chosen WordPress (a “free” platform) and are willing to pay for, let alone install at all, a plug-in. How big is that market, really? What percent, within that market, does your product appeal to?

Everyone points to Carl Hancock and Gravity Forms. Well, how many people work at Rocket Genius? Assuming Carl’s heavily reinvesting his revenue, we can probably make some educated guesses about their revenue. Is that the cap for a “WordPress product”? Pippin Williamson, also revered as model for commercializing plug-ins, told us what he made at Pressnomics. With all respect: eek.

So now that I’ve startled everyone, let me reframe this: I think there’s real opportunity to build healthy businesses with innovative solutions in the WordPress space, and we’re happy to be part of that. I would just caution anyone who thinks this space is any kind of gravy train.

Other notable WordPress names working with seoslides

Like this? Consider sharing it or subscribe to the mailing list and stay up to date on all the WordPress entrepreneurial goodness. Want to guest blog about your WordPress business experience? Contact me.

I invited 4 early stage WordPress startups to pitch to a panel of veteran WordPress entrepreneurs. In the pitch, they tell us what their product or service is all about, what pain points their solving and how they plan on growing. The judges provide their feedback about the pitch and pick their favorite at the end. The pilot episode (I feel) was amazing.

It was great to have 4 contestants share their ideas and business plan along with the judges providing excellent actionable feedback. Everyone did an amazing job and I can’t thank them enough for working through the pilot episode with me.

That said, there’s a lot of logistics and time spent to put together a show like this and it’s why I’m opening it up for “donations” and sponsorship.

Just 5 bucks (or name your price)

If you’re a fan of the show and you want to see it continue, that’s all I’m asking for. What will that $5 score you?

In the credits of the next episode

Membership access to the uncut version of the pilot episode

Access to the the contestants “biggest challenge” questions and the judges response

If you don’t know who Brian is, where the heck have you been? He’s the first WordPress entrepreneur to pioneer the premium theme business as we know it today. He started StudioPress over six years ago as a passion project and soon became the de facto site to purchase premium WordPress themes.

We’re not just talking selling themes in this interview. We’re talking about becoming an “accidental business owner” and team leader to a large distributed staff.

See, Brian didn’t set out with plans to scale, grow a a multi-million dollar business or partner with Copyblogger media. These pieces of the puzzle sort of fell together and we’re going to learn what that ride is like.

Interview with Brian Gardner of Copyblogger founder of StudioPress

Listen to the audio version

Can there be another StudioPress success story?

There’s no doubt about it, the theme market is a big scary place. With the likes of Woo and Brian’s CopyBlogger market cache, how can you compete?

Brian provides some great advice to those of us up to (crazy enough) for this challenge.

One key takeaway, that I feel gets overlooked often, is partnering with other shops. Either designing child themes for a framework like Genesis or getting a helping hand from another designer/developer type if you need it.

But what about the customer? Can we find a niche to exploit?

The answer is, yes.

Even CopyBlogger’s audience is fairly diverse, so pinning down a vertical is still a totally acceptable strategy.

Finding Inspiration

Spoken like a true founder, Brian says anything is possible with Genesis. That makes starting a new canvas to a design much more attractive.

Couple that with a desire to publishing his thoughts and getting bored of looking at the same old website, he’s constantly under the hood tinkering with his theme.

When asked if he looks to any other designers for inspiration, he confessed he tries to keep his blinders on. He doesn’t want to get labeled as too inspired or down right copy another design.

The power of a personal blog

Being transparent is healthy.

For those of you following Brian, you know he wears his heart on his sleeve and that’s a good thing. His passion for writing isn’t that of his partner Brian Clark either.

This is growing an audience for other reasons than just business.

If you’re not focused, you’re not efficient

It’s an outlet for any form of emotion, be it creative or personal.

It’s an audience for the gut check you might ask for from time to time. I love this concept and I think it’s over shadowed by the typical web marketing crowd blogging for dollars.

If you’re interested in attending PressNomics or learning what it’s all about, check out my review here. Loads of good comments there too. So what’s up in episode 53?

I had a chance to sit down with Josh Strebel founder of Page.ly at the event and chat with him to find out what’s going on in his world. If you’re thinking about starting your own managed hosting WordPress service you’ll want to tune in.

Episode 53: Joshua Strebel of Page.ly and what’s going on at the Matt Report

Listen to the audio version

PressNomics founder

Josh was super busy at the event so I really appreciate the time he took to share his thoughts with us.

He’s seemingly playing the long game — heck, he was the first in the managed WordPress hosting space so he knows a thing or two about historical trends. I even asked him what happens when 3 managed WordPress hosting providers walk into a bar — you might be surprised with his answer.

But here’s my take away from the event and my time with Josh:

Give back to people however you can and good things will happen.

In a world of lean startup, MVP and analytics we get blinded by all of this data. We are trained to think our customers are 1’s & 0’s driven by keywords and algorithms.

If you do get a chance to attend his WordPress business conference, you’ll see that’s not the case.

Handshakes, hugs and laughs is what spread around. No mention of partner or white label accounts for his business. Just put out really good stuff and connect people. Which is just amazing and a motto I try to follow.

Matt Report listener survey

If you’re on my newsletter, a while back I pinged you about what your #1 challenge was.

I cover the top 3 in today’s episode and provide some of my own feedback within their respective areas. So here we are a few months later — are these still your #1 challenges?

Have you found a new one? Let us know in the comments below.

Loving what I do here

It’s not a question, it’s a statement.

I met so many awesome people out in Arizona last week that tune in week after week. THANK YOU!

It was great hearing that I’ve connected with so many of you and have helped in some small way or another. I really want to kick things up a notch and create even better content for you. Stuff that you really wantevery week — heck every day!

Let me know what I can do better around here. A lot of folks asked me if I had been charging for anything and I said no. That’s not to say it hasn’t been on my mind and I would love to introduce a “Pro” version of Matt Report.

I don’t know what it is yet, aside from my 1 on 1 consulting I’ve been doing. A membership or mastermind of sorts is the first logical step — but I don’t want to be just another drop in the bucket. I want to make lasting impressions and provide real return on an investment.

Guest blogging

I’m looking to grow this community of WordPress entrepreneurs and invite you to use this blog as your platform. I chat more about that in today’s episode so give it a listen.

Til next time!

]]>https://mattreport.com/josh-strebel-pagely-matt-report/feed/10PressNomics: Not all rainbow hopping unicorns and why that’s a good thinghttps://mattreport.com/pressnomics-review/
https://mattreport.com/pressnomics-review/#commentsMon, 21 Oct 2013 15:42:15 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=2850There’s a certain energy in the air when you first walk into the room at PressNomics.

In my perspective, WordCamp’s are light and airy, like a high school reunion.

This time, we were amongst other entrepreneurs, marketers and founders of the most respected WordPress businesses. There were no hugs and rainbows, but an immediate feeling of “things” being set in motion.

Ideas, collaboration, partnerships and strategies.

Envato asked for feedback from folks like Pippin, Shane Pearlman was literally surfing from person to person sparking collaboration and Carl Hancock was, well — Carl.

PressNomics is not all hugs and rainbows, it’s an environment that can act as a catalyst to spur innovation in the WordPress world.

Competition in the air

I was going to open this up with the softer side of PressNomics and why, if you’re in the WordPress business, this is a must attend event.

Instead, I’ll give you the harder side of why you should attend.

Competition.

This was the energy I could feel resonating at the event.

I love competition, it’s what drives my team and I every day. WordPress community in general tends to shy away from the competitive factor that surrounds us. Sure we’re all working for the greater good of the platform and spreading the adoption of this software — but at the end of the day we’re competing with one another.

I don’t care if you’re GravityForms and you think there’s no competitive offering. I respect the mantra and confidence, but…

The British empire thought they didn’t have competition

Kodak was synonymous with photography

Microsoft was unstoppable

General Motors had the more cash in the bank than anyone

Apple, yes Apple, is feeling the squeeze

You have competition. We have competition.

Even the Matt Report has competition and I hung out with him during my time in Phoenix. You’re damn right I’m going to get sharper and work harder to be the #1 WordPress podcast for my fans.

The difference at this event is, the competition is willing to share and start a dialogue with you.

That’s what is unique to PressNomics and the WordPress business community at large. We acknowledge that at the end of the day we need to put food on the table, but it isn’t without helping our peers that will get us there.

In his example of “the stack” Derek challenges us to think about this example:

Linux > Apache > PHP > WordPress > you

What are we going to create next?

This struck a chord with me and encouraged me to dig deeper into my business and this very podcast. What can I do to inspire and put a dent in humanity with my art?

Envato

It was encouraging to witness the interaction of the Envato team and some of the key WordPress developers of our community. Support and splitting the revenue still seems to be an issue for most and it appears that Envato is listening.

Wether or not they cut special deals for the big volume sellers and adjust their support structure for those securing their own brands is yet to be seen. Either way they are listening and engaging which seemingly means they’re willing to adjust.

Networking

This was probably the most important element of the event.

You would see a couple people in the lobby chatting and showing screenshots huddled around a laptop. Around the corner it was groups of people standing in the snack room sharing their pain points and how they can help one another after the conference.

If awards could have been given out to the most conversation’s started, it would have gone to Shane of Modern Tribe. I saw him in more circles and groups peppered throughout the event.

The event sparked from hallway talks did not let me down and affirmed it was the real magic happening.

From the $6,000 raised for the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital all the way down to the awesome mugs we received that were hand crafted from an artist on Etsy — truly your work keeps us connected to what this all really means in the long run.

This short paragraph doesn’t do you justice to the hard work and thought you put into the experience for all of us. I’m sure I speak for everyone at PressNomics 2013 — we wish you continued success and joy in your journey to help others.

“The sexiest voice on stage” and one of the most approachable founders at the event.

We had lunch, chatted about business, and it felt like we’ve been friends for a decade.

If you watch my interview with Cory, it’s fairly obvious and in person he just swoons you. I chat with a lot of WordPress folks and have bite sized 140 character conversations with them throughout the day. Finally getting to meet someone in person and shake their hand is another reason to get out from behind the Twittersphere.

Humility

It was a humbling experience chatting with a bunch of Matt Report fans that have been tuning in week after week. The best part about the feedback is when I hear they are actually applying the lessons learned from each episode.

I truly appreciated talking with all of you at the event and hope to see you there next year.

Is this event for you?

I’ll be honest, when I first saw the announcement for 2013 I was skeptical.

Do I want to attend another reunion of sorts?

Is this going to be clicky with a side of haves and have nots?

If you’re running a WordPress business the easy answer is: yes.

Even if you’re a veteran, you’re going to discover other companies around you doing amazing things. I’ll be honest, it’s not without it’s clicky groups in the hallway, but that experience is dwarfed by the positive energy and mix of WordPress entrepreneurs willing to chat with you.

Before I forget, all of the speakers were great and I have a ton of takeaway from each topic. Josh and Sally were able to bring together a great mix of voices. I’m sure I speak for the rest, we applaud you for this event.

Humbled to be there thanks to my friend Chris Lema and already looking forward to next year.

First, I want to say it was a humbling experience getting some of the best folks in the WordPress community to join me and devote over an hour of their time. Seriously, you guys rock.

Second, the freshman round of startup contestants did a great job presenting and asking questions — really, you folks are what inspire me to do this stuff. I threw a lot of weight on your shoulders as our guinea pigs and you handled it effortlessly — like a true entrepreneur.

Catch a preview the episode below and don’t forget to join the mailing list to know when the full show is released!

]]>https://mattreport.com/challenge-pilot-episode-big-thanks/feed/2Stop caring what other people thinkhttps://mattreport.com/stop-caring-what-other-people-think/
https://mattreport.com/stop-caring-what-other-people-think/#commentsFri, 11 Oct 2013 15:49:08 +0000http://mattreport.com/?p=2840Two of my favorite entrepreneurs to follow tweeted out some awesome content this week.

Gary Vaynerchuck is one of the hardest working dude’s getting shit done in the web tech space. I feel like I have to swear just because he does. In a world of A/B testing, analytics and social graphs he boils it down to a handshake as the ultimate deal closer.

This recent video resonates with me on a whole new level, especially when publishing a new post. I don’t consider myself even a decent writer, let along a good one and pressing Publish is always a stressful situation for me.

Don’t be afraid to rub shoulders with folks who might be “smarter” than you. To me, it’s all relative. Your experiences define who we are and the world’s a big place. It’s not about what you’ve accomplished on paper, it’s what you believe in and your vision to your success. Whatever that might be.

Thoughts?

Mark Suster on rapping

Mark produces some great content. If there’s one dude I wish I could shadow for a day, it’s him. (or Jason)

Corp Dev is rapping my knuckles because I had planned to speak at the Under the Radar Conference. They say I can’t go. They don’t want me around other buyers. But what if they pull out? Then I’m stuck and didn’t foster relationships?

This sucks. They can’t tell me where I can go and where I can’t!

Just a game. Fuck it. Who cares.

Ohh boy, he’s swearing — yikes!

One might think this is inappropriate for the normalcy in VC and financing — but Mark aint normal!

Take a few minutes and read his post, it’s a breathe of fresh air hearing this story from a guy in his position. We all deal with the stresses of running our own gig.

How do you cope with it?

Do it now and do it your way

In my recent announcement of the WordPress Startup Challenge I received a lot of e-mails from entrepreneurs who were afraid to share their idea.

It’s not ready.

I don’t think people will like it.

I’m afraid to talk about it.

Stop.

If not now, when? If not you, who?

Some other folks told me that I was wasting my time — no one cares about WordPress startups.

Guess what, I care and if you’re reading this, I think you care too. I’m not doing this for 100,000 views – I’m doing it for 1,000 people who care and I’m doing it my way.

Do it your way and don’t be afraid of offending yourself and others around you.